A  GUILDSMAN’S  INTERPRETATION 

OF  HISTORY 


A  GUILDSMAN’S 
INTERPRETATION 
OF  HISTORY 


BY 

ARTHUR  T.  PENTY 

J  • 

AUTHOR  OF  “THE  RESTORATION  OF  THE  GUILD  SYSTEM/’ 
“  OLD  WORLDS  FOR  NEW,”  “GUILDS  AND 
THE  SOCIAL  CRISIS” 


SUNRISE  TURN  INC. 
51  EAST  44TH  STREET 
NEW  YORK 


HC  9o5 

Pf 


246520 


B^T°N  college  library 
Chestnut  hill,  mass. 


(All  rights  reserved) 


PREFACE 


The  primary  object  of  this  history  is  to  relate  the  social 
problem  to  the  experience  of  the  past  and  so  to  help  bring 
about  a  clearer  comprehension  of  its  nature.  "  The  reason,” 
says  the  author  of  Erewhon ,  “  why  we  cannot  see  the  future 
as  plainly  as  the  past  is  because  we  know  too  little  of  the 
actual  past  and  the  actual  present.  The  future  depends 
upon  the  present,  and  the  present  depends  upon  the  past,  and 
the  past  is  unalterable.”  It  is  by  studying  the  past  in  the 
light  of  the  experience  of  the  present  and  the  present  in 
the  light  of  the  past  that  we  may  attain  to  a  fuller  under¬ 
standing  both  of  the  present  and  the  past.  Certain  aspects 
of  industrialism  are  new  to  the  world,  and  the  past  offers 
us  no  ready-made  solution  for  them,  but  to  understand  them 
it  is  necessary  to  be  familiar  with  Mediaeval  principles,  for 
such  Mediaeval  problems  as  those  of  law  and  currency,  of 
the  State  and  the  Guilds,  lie  behind  industrialism  and  have 
determined  its  peculiar  development.  If  we  were  more 
familiar  with  history  we  should  see  the  problems  of  indus¬ 
trialism  in  a  truer  perspective  and  would  have  less  disposition 
to  evolve  social  theories  from  our  inner  consciousness.  This 
neglect  of  the  experience  of  the  past  is  no  new  thing ;  it 
is  as  old  as  civilization  itself.  Thus  in  criticizing  some 
of  the  fantastic  proposals  of  Plato  for  the  reorganization 
of  Greek  society,  Aristotle  says:  “  Let  us  remember  that  we 
should  not  disregard  the  experience  of  the  ages  ;  in  the 
multitude  of  years,  these  things,  if  they  were  good,  would 
certainly  not  have  been  unknown  ;  for  almost  everything 

has  been  found  out,  although  sometimes  they  are  not  put 

5 


6  A  Guildsmaris  Interpretation  of  History 


together  ;  in  other  cases  men  do  not  use  the  knowledge 
that  they  have/’  It  would  be  a  mistake  to  push  this  idea 
too  far,  and  refuse  to  entertain  any  proposal  which  could 
not  claim  the  authority  of  history,  but  it  would  be  just  as 
well  before  embarking  on  any  new  enterprise  to  inquire 
if  history  has  anything  to  say  about  it.  If  we  did  we  should 
find  that  debatable  matter  was  confined  within  very  narrow 
limits,  and  with  minds  enriched  through  the  study  of  history 
we  should  not  waste  so  much  of  our  time  in  fruitless  discussion. 
Above  all,  we  should  speedily  discover  that  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  a  cure-all  for  social  ills.  We  should  become  more 
interested  in  principles  and  have  less  regard  for  schemes. 

Though  the  Guild  theory  is  ultimately  based  upon  histori¬ 
cal  considerations,  the  absence  hitherto  of  a  history  written 
from  the  Guildsman’s  point  of  view  has  been  a  serious 
handicap  to  the  movement.  Not  only  has  this  lack  pre¬ 
vented  it  from  giving  historical  considerations  the  prominence 
they  deserve,  but  when  Guild  ideas  are  adopted  by  Socialists 
who  have  not  been  historical  students  they  are  apt  to  be 
distorted  by  the  materialist  conception  of  history  which 
lies  in  the  background  of  the  minds  of  so  many.  Hence 
it  becomes  urgent,  if  the  movement  is  not  to  be  side-tracked, 
that  Guildsmen  should  have  a  history  of  their  own  which 
gathers  together  information  of  importance  to  them.  In 
this  volume  are  gathered  together  such  facts  from  a  hundred 
volumes,  and  it  is  hoped  by  organizing  them  into  a  consistent 
theory  to  show  not  only  that  history  is  capable  of  a  very 
different  interpretation  from  the  one  that  materialists  affirm 
but  that  the  Guild  Movement  has  a  definite  historical  signi¬ 
ficance.  Indeed,  we  are  persuaded  that  the  success  which 
has  followed  its  propaganda  is  ultimately  due  to  the  fact 
that  it  has  such  a  significance. 

That  the  materialist  conception  of  history  is  a  one-sided 
and  distorted  conception,  all  students  of  history  who  are 
not  materialists  by  temperament  are  well  aware.  It  is 
made  plausible  by  isolating  a  single  factor  in  history  and 


Preface 


7 


ignoring  other  factors.  The  theory  of  the  Class  War  is 
as  grotesque  and  false  an  explanation  of  the  history  of  society 
as  a  history  of  marriage  would  be  that  was  built  up  from 
the  records  of  Divorce  Courts,  which  carefully  took  note 
of  all  the  unhappy  marriages  and  denied  the  existence  of 
happy  ones  because  they  were  not  supported  by  documentary 
evidence.  The  heresies  of  Marx  stand  on  precisely  such 
a  footing.  They  are  false,  not  because  of  what  they  say, 
but  because  of  what  they  leave  unsaid*  Such  theories 
gain  credence  to-day  because  capitalism  has  undermined 
all  the  great  traditions  of  the  past,  and  thus  emptied  life 
of  its  contents.  It  is  true  that  by  the  light  of  the  materialist 
conception  considerable  patches  of  history,  including  the 
history  of  the  present  day,  may  be  explained.  It  is  true 
of  the  later  history  of  Greece  and  Rome  as  of  Europe  after 
the  Reformation  ;  for  in  the  decline  of  all  civilizations  the 
material  factor  comes  to  predominate.  But  as  an  explanation 
of  history  as  a  whole  and  of  the  Mediaeval  period  in  particular 
it  is  most  demonstrably  false,  and  only  ignorance,  if  not 
the  deliberate  falsification  in  the  past,  of  Mediaeval  history 
could  have  made  such  an  explanation  plausible.  It  is 
important  that  this  should  be  recognized,  not  merely  because 
it  is  an  injustice  to  the  past  to  have  its  reality  distorted, 
but  because  of  its  reaction  upon  the  mind  of  to-day.  It 
makes  all  the  difference  to  our  thinking  about  the  problems 
of  the  present  day  whether  we  believe  modern  society  has 
developed  from  a  social  system  which  was  inhuman  and 
based  upon  class  tyranny,  in  which  ignorance  and  super¬ 
stition  prevailed,  or  from  one  which  enjoyed  freedom  and 
understood  the  nature  of  liberty  in  its  widest  and  most 
philosophic  sense.  If  a  man  believes  that  society  in  the 
past  was  based  upon  class  tyranny  he  will  see  everything 
in  an  inverted  perspective,  he  will  be  predisposed  to  support 
all  the  forces  of  social  disintegration  which  masquerade 
under  the  name  of  “  progress  ”  because  he  will  view  with 
suspicion  all  traditions  which  have  survived  from  the  past 


8 


A  Guildsmaris  Interpretation  of  History 


and  have  a  prejudice  against  all  normal  forms  of  social 
organization.  If  it  be  true  that  the  Middle  Ages  was  a 
time  of  tyranny,  ignorance  and  superstition,  then  to  a 
logically  minded  person  it  naturally  follows  that  the  emanci¬ 
pation  of  the  people  is  bound  up  with  the  destruction  of 
such  traditions  as  have  survived,  for  to  such  a  mind  tradition 
and  t}/ranny  become  synonymous  terms.  But  if,  on  the 
contrary,  he  knows  that  such  was  not  the  case,  that  the 
Middle  Ages  was  an  age  of  real  enlightenment,  he  will  not 
be  so  readily  deceived.  He  will  know  how  to  estimate 
at  their  proper  value  the  movements  he  sees  around  him, 
and  not  be  so  disposed  to  place  his  faith  in  quack  remedies, 
for  he  will  know  that  for  the  masses  the  transition  from  the 
Middle  Ages  has  not  been  one  from  bondage  to  freedom, 
from  poverty  to  well-being,  but  from  security  to  insecurity, 
from  status  to  wage-slavery,  from  well-being  to  poverty. 
He  will  know,  moreover,  that  the  Servile  State  is  not  a  new 
menace,  but  that  it  has  been  extending  its  tentacles  ever 
since  the  days  when  Roman  Law  was  revived. 

Looked  at  from  this  point  of  view,  the  materialist  con¬ 
ception  of  history,  with  its  prejudice  against  Mediae valism, 
is  a  useful  doctrine  for  the  purposes  of  destroying  existing 
society,  but  must  prevent  the  arrival  of  a  new  one.  I  feel 
fairly  safe  in  affirming  this,  because  Marx’s  forecasts  of  the 
future  are  in  these  days  being  falsified.  Up  to  a  certain 
point  Marx  was  right.  He  foresaw  that  the  trend  of  things 
would  be  for  industry  to  get  into  fewer  and  fewer  hands, 
but  it  cannot  be  claimed  that  the  deductions  he  made  from 
this  forecast  are  proving  to  be  correct,  for  he  did  not  foresee 
this  war.  The  circumstance  that  Marx  gave  it  as  his  opinion 
that  the  annexation  of  Alsace  and  Lorraine  by  Germany 
would  lead  in  fifty  years’  time  to  a  great  European  war 
does  not  acquit  him,  since  the  war  that  he  foresaw  was  a 
war  of  revenge  in  which  France  was  to  be  the  aggressor 
and  had  nothing  whatsoever  to  do  with  industrial  develop¬ 
ment,  which  this  one  certainly  had.  Not  having  foreseen 


Preface 


9 


this  war,  Marx  did  not  foresee  the  anti-climax  in  which 
the  present  system  seems  destined  to  end.  And  this  is 
fatal  to  the  whole  social  theory,  because  it  brings  to  the 
light  of  day  a  weakness  which  runs  through  all  his  theory — 
his  inability  to  understand  the  moral  factor  and  hence  to 
make  allowances  for  it  in  his  theories.  Marx  saw  the  material 
forces  at  work  in  society  up  to  a  certain  point  very  clearly, 
and  from  this  point  of  view  he  is  worthy  of  study.  But 
he  never  understood  that  this  was  only  one  half  of  the 
problem  and  finally  the  less  important  half.  For  along 
with  all  material  change  there  go  psychological  changes  ; 
and  these  he  entirely  ignores.  In  the  case  in  question 
Marx  failed  to  foresee  that  the  growth  of  the  pressure  of 
competition  would  be  accompanied  by  an  increase  in  national 
jealousies.  On  the  contrary,  he  tells  us  in  the  Communist 
Manifesto  (written  in  1847)  that  national  antagonisms  are 
steadily  to  diminish.  But  if  he  misjudged  national — I 
might  almost  say  industrial — psychology  on  this  most 
fundamental  point,  it  demonstrates  that  for  practical  purposes 
Marx  and  his  materialist  conception  of  history  are  anything 
but  an  infallible  guide.  And  so  we  are  led  to  inquire  whether, 
if  Marx,  owing  to  his  neglect  of  psychology,  proved  to  be 
wrong  on  this  issue,  he  may  not  be  equally  untrustworthy 
in  other  directions  ;  whether,  in  fact,  the  anti-climax  which 
has  overtaken  national  relationships  may  not  likewise  take 
place  in  industry  ;  whether  the  process  of  industrial  central¬ 
ization  which  Marx  foresaw  is  not  being  accompanied  by 
internal  disintegration,  and  whether  the  issue  of  it  all  is 
to  be  his  proletarian  industralized  State  or  a  relapse  into 
social  anarchy.  Such,  indeed,  does  appear  to  me  to  be 
the  normal  trend  of  economic  development ;  for  when 
everything  but  economic  considerations  have  been  excluded 
from  life — and  the  development  of  industrialism  tends 
to  exclude  everything  else — men  tend  naturally  to  quarrel, 
because  there  is  nothing  positive  left  to  bind  men  together 
in  a  communal  life.  Looking  at  history  from  this  point 


10  A  Guildsmaris  Interpretation  of  History 

of  view,  it  may  be  said  that  if  Marx’s  view  is  correct,  and  if 
exploitation  has  played  the  part  in  history  which  he  affirms 
it  has,  then,  frankly,  I  do  not  see  how  civilization  ever  came 
into  existence.  We  know  that  exploitation  is  breaking 
civilisation  up  ;  we  may  be  equally  sure  it  did  not  create 
it.  Moreover/ it  leaves  us  with  no  hope  for  the  future.  For 
if  it  be  true  that  the  history  of  civilization  is  merely  the 
history  of  class  struggles,  what  reason  is  there  to  suppose 
that  with  the  end  of  the  reign  of  capitalism  class  struggle 
will  come  to  an  end  ?  May  it  not  merely  change  its  form  ? 
The  experience  of  the  Bolshevik  regime  in  Russia  would 
appear  to  suggest  such  a  continuation. 

It  remains  for  me  to  thank  Mr.  J.  Pla,  Mr.  M.  B.  Reckitt, 
Mr.  G.  R.  S.  Taylor,  Mr.  L.  Ward  and  Mr.  C.  White  for  the 
interesting  material  they  so  generously  placed  at  my  disposal, 
and  the  Editor  of  the  New  Age  for  permission  to  reprint  such 
chapters  and  parts  of  chapters  as  appeared  in  his  journal. 


66,  Strand  on  Green,  W.  4. 
September  1919. 


A.  J.  P. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

I. 

II. 

III. 

IV. 
V. 

VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 

XI. 

XII. 

XIII. 

XIV. 
XV. 

XVI. 

XVII. 

XVIII. 

XIX. 

XX. 

XXI. 


GREECE  AND  ROME  .... 

CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  GUILDS  . 

THE  MEDI/EVAL  HIERARCHY 
THE  REVIVAL  OF  ROMAN  LAW 
ROMAN  LAW  IN  ENGLAND 
THE  CONSPIRACY  AGAINST  MEDIEVALISM 
MEDIEVALISM  AND  SCIENCE 
THE  ARTS  OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 
THE  FRANCISCANS  AND  THE  RENAISSANCE 
THE  REFORMATION  IN  GERMANY 

THE  SUPPRESSION  OF  THE  ENGLISH  MONASTERIES 

THE  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND  . 

THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

CAPITALISM  AND  THE  GUILDS 

POLITICAL  AND  ECONOMIC  THOUGHT  AFTER  THE 
REFORMATION  .... 

THE  INDUSTRIAL  REVOLUTION 

PARLIAMENTARIANISM  AND  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

ON  LIMITED  LIABILITY  COMPANIES 

THE  WAR  AND  THE  AFTERMATH  . 

BOLSHEVISM  AND  THE  CLASS  WAR 

THE  PATH  TO  THE  GUILDS 

INDEX  ...... 


PAGE 

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34 

47 

58 

73 

85 

102 

117 

126 

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158 

170 

189 

214 

224 

237 

246 

259 

271 

285 

298 

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V 


A  Guildsman’s  Interpretation 

of  History 

CHAPTER  I 
GREECE  AND  ROME 

The  first  fact  in  history  which  has  significance  for  Guildsmen 
is  that  of  the  introduction  of  currency,  which  took  place 
in  the  seventh  century  before  Christ  when  the  Lydian  kings 
introduced  stamped  metal  bars  of  fixed  weight  as  a  medium 
of  exchange.  In  the  course  of  a  generation  or  two  this 
uniform  measure  entirely  replaced  the  bars  of  unfixed  weight 
which  the  Greeks  had  made  use  of  when  exchange  was  not 
by  barter.  It  was  a  simple  device  from  which  no  social 
change  was  expected,  but  the  development  which  followed 
upon  it  was  simply  stupendous.  Civilization — that  is, 
the  development  of  the  material  accessories  of  life,  may 
be  said  to  date  from  that  simple  invention,  for  by  facilitating 
exchange  it  made  foreign  trade,  differentiation  of  occupation 
and  specialization  on  the  crafts  and  arts  possible.  But 
along  with  the  undoubted  advantages  which  a  fixed  currency 
brought  with  it  there  came  an  evil  unknown  to  primitive 
society — the  economic  problem  ;  for  the  introduction  of 
currency  created  an  economic  revolution,  comparable  only 
to  that  which  followed  the  invention  of  the  steam  engine 
in  more  recent  times,  by  completely  undermining  the  com¬ 
munist  base  of  the  Mediterranean  societies.  “  We  can 
watch  it  in  Greece,  in  Palestine  and  in  Italy,  and  see  the 
temper  of  the  sufferers  reflected  in  Hesiod  and  Theognis, 
Amos  and  Hosea,  and  in  the  legends  of  early  Rome.” 

The  progress  of  economic  individualism  soon  divided 

13 


i 


14  A  Guildsmaris  Interpretation  of  History 


Greek  society  into  two  distinct  and  hostile  classes — the 
prosperous  landowners,  the  merchants  and  money-lending 
class  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  peasantry  and  the  debt-slaves 
on  the  other.  Hitherto  no  one  had  ever  thought  of  claiming 
private  property  in  land.  It  had  never  been  treated  as  a 
commodity  to  be  bought  and  sold.  The  man  who  tilled 
the  soil  thought  of  it  as  belonging  to  the  family,  to  his 
ancestors  and  descendants  as  much  as  to  himself.  But 
within  a  generation  or  two  after  the  introduction  of  currency 
the  peasantry  everywhere  began  to  find  themselves  in  need  of 
money,  and  they  found  that  it  could  be  borrowed  by  pledging 
their  holdings  as  security  for  loans.  It  was  thus  that  private 
property  in  land  first  came  into  existence.  Land  tended 
to  pass  into  the  hands  of  the  Eupatrid  by  default.  For 
lean  years  have  a  way  of  running  in  cycles,  and  at  such  times 
the  “ haves”  can  take  advantage  of  the  necessities  of  the 
“  have-nots.”  1 

The  reason  for  these  developments  is  not  far  to  seek. 
So  long  as  exchange  was  carried  on  by  barter,  a  natural 
limit  was  placed  to  the  development  of  trade,  because  people 
would  only  exchange  for  their  own  personel  use.  Exchange 
would  only  be  possible  when  each  party  to  the  bargain 
possessed  articles  which  the  other  wanted.  But  with  the 
introduction  of  currency  this  limitation  was  removed,  and 
for  the  first  time  in  history  there  came  into  existence  a 
class  of  men  who  bought  and  sold  entirely  for  the  purposes 
of  gain.  These  middlemen  or  merchants  became  specialists 
in  finance.  They  knew  better  than  the  peasantry  the 
market  value  of  things,  and  so  found  little  difficulty  in 
taking  advantage  of  them.  Little  by  little  they  became 
wealthy  and  the  peasantry  their  debtors.  It  is  the  same 
story  wherever  currency  is  unregulated — the  distributor 
enslaves  the  producer.  So  it  is  not  surprising  that  the 
Greeks  always  maintained  a  certain  prejudice  against  all 
occupations  connected  with  buying  and  selling,  which  they 
held  were  of  a  degrading  nature.  For  though  it  is  manifest 
that  society  cannot  get  along  without  traders,  it  is  imperative 
for  the  well-being  of  society  that  they  do  not  exercise  too 
much  power.  The  Greeks  found  by  experience  that  such 

1  See  The  Greek  Commonwealth,  by  Alfred  Zimmem,  pp.  1 10-14. 


Greece  and  Rome 


15 


men  were  no  better  than  they  ought  to  be  and  that  the 
association  of  trading  with  money-making  reflected  itself 
in  their  outlook  on  life,  leading  them  eventually  to  suppose 
that  everything  could  be  bought  and  that  there  was  nothing 
too  great  to  be  expressed  in  terms  of  money.1 

Though  the  Greeks  thought  much  about  the  problem 
which  had  followed  the  introduction  of  currency,  to  the  end 
it  eluded  the  efforts  of  their  lawgivers  and  statesmen  to 
solve  it,  and  mankind  had  to  wait  until  the  coming  of  Medie¬ 
valism  before  a  solution  was  forthcoming.  Then  the  Guilds 
solved  the  problem  by  restricting  currency  to  its  legitimate 
use  as  a  medium  of  exchange  by  means  of  fixing  prices. 
Plato,  it  is  true,  anticipated  the  Medieval  solution.  In 
Laws  (917)  he  actually  forbids  bargaining  and  insists  upon 
fixed  prices.  But  nothing  came  of  his  suggestion.  Perhaps 
it  was  too  late  in  the  day  to  give  practical  application  to 
such  a  principle.  For  Plato  wrote  in  the  period  following 
the  Peloponnesian  War  when  profiteering  was  rampant,  and 
a  restoration  of  the  communal  spirit  to  society,  such  as 
followed  the  rise  of  Christianity,  was  necessary  before  such 
a  measure  could  be  applied.  Hence  it  was  that  Aristotle 
reverted  to  the  principle  of  Solon  that  the  cultivation  of 
good  habits  must  accompany  the  promulgation  of  good 
laws. 

All  the  early  Greek  lawgivers  who  attempted  to  solve 
the  economic  problem  which  currency  had  introduced 
sought  the  solution  not  along  Guild  lines,  by  seeking  to  re¬ 
strict  currency  to  its  legitimate  use  as  a  medium  of  exchange, 
but  by  restricting  the  use  of  wealth.  Lycurgus  preserves 
the  communal  life  of  Sparta  for  centuries  against  disruption 
on  the  one  hand  by  inducing  his  fellow-citizens  to  resume 
the  habits  of  their  forefathers,  to  sacrifice  all  artificial  dis¬ 
tinctions,  under  the  rigid  but  equal  discipline  of  a  camp 
which  included  among  other  things  the  taking  of  meals 
in  common,  and  on  the  other  by  enforcing  a  division  of 
the  lands  equally  among  the  families  and  by  the  institution 
of  a  currency  deliberately  created  to  restrict  business  opera¬ 
tions  within  the  narrowest  limits.  It  took  the  form  of 
bundles  of  iron  bars,  and  it  appears  to  have  answered  the 
1  See  The  Greek  Commonwealth,  by  Alfred  Zimmern,  p.  274. 


16  A  Guildsma.'ris  Interpretation  of  History 


purpose  for  which  it  was  designed  very  well,  for  the  Spartans 
never  became  a  commercial  nation. 

This  state  of  things  continued  down  to  the  Peloponnesian 
War,  when  the  Spartans,  finding  themselves  at  a  disadvantage 
with  Athens,  inasmuch  as  without  coined  money  they  could 
have  no  fleet,  departed  from  the  law  of  Lycurgus.  About 
the  same  time  they  threw  over  their  system  of  land  tenure. 
Continual  warfare  reduced  the  number  of  Spartans,  and  the 
accumulation  of  several  estates  in  one  family  created  dispro¬ 
portionate  wealth,  a  tendency  which  was  facilitated  by  a 
law  promoted  by  the  Ephor  Epitadeus  who  granted  liberty 
to  bequeath  property.  Thus  it  came  to  pass  that  instead 
of  the  9,000  property-owning  Spartans  mentioned  in  the 
regislation  of  Lycurgus,  their  numbers  were  reduced  to 
600,  of  whom  only  100  were  in  full  enjoyment  of  all  civil 
rights.  Naturally  such  economic  inequalities  broke  up 
the  communal  life.  The  poorer  citizens  found  themselves 
excluded  from  the  active  exercise  of  their  civil  rights,  and 
could  not  keep  pace  with  the  rich  in  their  mode  of  living, 
nor  fulfil  the  indispensable  conditions  which  had  been  imposed 
by  Lycurgus  upon  every  Spartan  citizen. 

In  Attica  the  problem  was  faced  in  a  different  way. 
Lycurgus’  solution  consisted  not  merely  in  putting  the 
clock  back,  as  such  measures  would  be  called  in  these  days, 
but  by  causing  the  clock  to  stand  still.  His  solution  was 
a  democratic  one  in  so  far  as  democracy  is  possible  among 
a  slave-owning  people.  But  Solon  in  Attica  sought  a  remedy 
along  different  lines.  He  accepted  currency  and  the  social 
changes  which  came  with  it,  and  substituted  property  for 
birth  as  the  standard  for  determining  the  rights  and  duties 
of  the  citizens.  He  divided  them  into  four  classes,  which 
were  distinguished  from  each  other  by  their  mode  of  military 
service  and  the  proportion  of  their  incomes  which  was  paid 
in  taxation.  The  lowest  class  paid  no  taxes  at  all,  were 
excluded  from  public  offices,  but  were  allowed  to  take  part 
in  the  popular  assembly  as  well  as  in  the  courts  in  which 
justice  was  administered  by  the  people.  Like  Lycurgus, 
he  sought  to  redress  the  inequalities  of  wealth,  but,  unlike 
him,  he  sought  a  solution,  not  in  the  enforcement  of  a  rigid 
discipline  upon  the  citizens,  but  by  removing  the  temptation 


Greece  and  Rome 


17 


to  accumulate  wealth.  This  was  the  object  of  his  sumptuary 
laws,  which  were  designed  to  make  the  rich  and  poor  look 
as  much  alike  as  possible,  in  order  to  promote  a  democracy 
of  personal  habits  if  not  of  income.  But  though  he  did 
not  put  the  clock  back  as  far  as  Lycurgus,  he  did  put  it 
back  to  the  extent  of  giving  things  in  many  directions  a 
fresh  start.  It  was  for  this  purpose  that  he  cancelled  the 
debts  of  the  peasantry  and  effected  a  redistribution  of 
property,  re-establishing  the  farmers  on  their  ancestral 
holdings.  Though  he  failed  to  restrain  usury,  he  sought 
to  mitigate  to  some  extent  its  hardships  by  forbidding  men 
to  borrow  money  on  the  security  of  their  persons,  while  he 
took  steps  to  redeem  those  defaulting  debtors  who  had  been 
sold  into  slavery  by  their  creditors,  using  any  public 
or  private  funds  he  could  secure  for  the  purpose  ;  while, 
further,  he  allowed  the  Athenians  to  leave  their  money  to 
whom  they  liked  provided  there  were  no  legitimate  male 
heirs.  These  reforms,  together  with  certain  changes  in 
the  juridical  administration,  were  the  most  important  of 
Solon's  laws.  He  refused  the  supreme  position  in  the  State, 
and  after  making  his  laws  he  went  abroad  for  ten  years 
to  give  his  constitution  a  fair  trial.  When  he  returned 
he  found  his  juridical  reforms  were  very  successful,  but  the 
economic  troubles,  though  they  had  been  allayed,  had  not 
been  eradicated.  The  peasants  had  been  put  back  on  their 
holdings,  but  they  had  no  capital  and  could  not  borrow  money. 
They  did  not  blame  Solon  for  his  laws,  but  the  magistrates 
for  the  way  they  were  administered.  The  State  became 
divided  into  three  hostile  parties — the  men  of  the  Shore, 
of  the  Plain,  and  of  the  Mountains — each  prepared  to  fight 
for  its  own  economic  and  territorial  interests. 

Fortunately  at  this  crisis  a  man  arose  capable  of  handling 
the  situation.  Pisistratus,  who  led  the  mountaineers,  was 
not  only  a  man  of  statesmanlike  qualities,  but  a  noted  soldier 
and  a  man  of  large  private  means,  and  after  some  vicissitudes 
he  succeeded  in  making  himself  absolute  master  of  the  country. 
When  in  power  he  found  a  remedy  for  the  shortage  of  capital 
among  the  peasants,  which  was  the  source  of  their  economic 
difficulty,  by  advancing  to  them  capital  out  of  his  own  private 
fortune.  This  provided  them  with  a  nest-egg  which  enabled 

2 


18  A  Guildsmarts  Interpretation  of  History 


them  to  tide  over  the  lean  years,  or  while  their  trees  were 
growing  to  maturity.  Their  troubles  were  now  at  an  end, 
and  we  hear  no  more  about  the  land  question  until  the 
Spartans,  towards  the  close  of  the  Peloponnesian  War,  came 
and  ruined  the  cultivation. 

Meanwhile,  as  a  consequence  of  the  development  of 
foreign  trade,  Athens  became  a  maritime,  commercial  and 
industrial  city  in  which  stock-jobbing,  lending  at  usury, 
and  every  form  of  financial  speculation  broke  loose.  This 
led  to  the  division  of  the  social  body  into  two  distinct  and 
hostile  factions — a  minority  which  possessed  most  of  the 
capital  and  whose  chief  concern  was  its  increase,  and  a 
mass  of  proletarians  who  were  filled  with  enmity  towards 
this  aristocracy  of  finance,  which  began  to  monopolize  all 
political  power.  It  was  thus  that  the  religious  aristocracy 
which  for  so  long  a  period  had  governed  Greece  was  superseded 
by  a  plutocracy  whose  triumph  Solon  had  unconsciously 
prepared  when  he  took  income  as  a  basis  for  the  division  of 
the  classes.  During  the  Peloponnesian  War  the  plutocracy 
became  very  unpopular — presumably  for  profiteering,  to 
which  wars  give  every  opportunity — and  in  Samos,  Messenia 
and  Megara  the  people,  tired  of  economic  subjection,  revolted, 
slew  the  rich,  did  away  with  all  taxes,  and  confiscated  and 
divided  landed  property.  The  war  entirely  undermined  all 
stability  in  the  Greek  States,  leaving  behind  it  as  a  heritage 
an  unemployed  class  of  soldiers  and  rowers  which  the  social 
system  was  powerless  to  absorb.  They  became  a  constant 
source  of  trouble,  and  from  the  Peloponnesian  War  until 
the  Roman  Conquest  “  the  cities  of  Greece  wavered  between 
two  revolutions  ;  one  that  despoiled  the  rich,  and  another 
that  reinstated  them  in  the  possession  of  their  fortunes.” 
It  was  in  order  to  find  a  solution  for  this  unemployed  problem 
that  Alexander  the  Great,  at  the  recommendation  of  Isocrates, 
undertook  the  conquest  of  Asia  and  planted  unemployed 
farm  colonies  of  Greeks  as  far  East  as  Cabul.1 

Reading  Greek  history  reminds  us  of  the  fact  that  the 
Class  War  is  not  a  doctrine  peculiar  to  the  present  age.  But 
it  is  interesting  to  observe  that  it  entirely  failed  to  effect 
a  solution  of  the  economic  problem  which  distracted  Greece. 

1  Zimmern,  p.  263. 


Greece  and  Ro7ne 


19 


Unregulated  currency  having  given  rise  to  economic  in¬ 
dividualism  and  destroyed  the  common  ownership  of  property, 
the  solidarity  of  society  slowly  fell  to  pieces.  It  had  under¬ 
mined  alike  the  independence  of  the  peasantry  and  the 
old  religious  aristocracy  which  had  hitherto  governed  Greece, 
and  had  concentrated  power  entirely  in  the  hands  of  a 
plutocracy  which,  like  all  plutocracies,  was  blind  to  everything 
except  its  own  immediate  interests.  It  was  thus  that 
Greek  society,  from  being  united,  became  divided  into  two 
distinct  and  hostile  classes  in  which  the  possibility  of  revolu¬ 
tion  became  an  ever-present  contingency.  The  frequent 
revolutions  excited  by  the  abuse  of  power  of  the  plutocracy 
led  to  the  thinning  of  the  agricultural  population  and  the 
misery  of  the  inhabitants,  and  prepared  the  people  to  suffer 
without  resistance — nay,  perhaps  to  welcome  the  Roman 
invasion  and  conquest. 

Uncontrolled  currency  brought  the  same  evils  into 
existence  in  Rome,  where  the  concentration  of  capital  in 
the  hands  of  a  few  and  its  accompanying  abuses  developed 
to  a  greater  extent  and  far  more  rapidly  than  in  Greece, 
once  they  got  under  way.  That  they  developed  much 
more  slowly  in  the  first  instance  was  perhaps  due  to  the 
fact  that  whereas  capitalism  in  Athens  was  a  consequence 
of  foreign  trade,  in  Rome  it  was  intimately  connected  with 
the  growth  of  militarism.  This  difference  is  in  all  respects 
parallel  to  the  difference  in  modern  times  between  capitalist 
development  in  England  and  Germany.  For  while  in 
Greece,  as  in  England,  the  development  of  capitalism  was 
a  private  affair  due  to  the  initiative  and  enterprise  of 
individual  traders,  in  Rome,  as  in  Germany,  it  was  closely 
associated  with  the  policy  of  the  Government. 

Rome  was  originally  a  small  agricultural  state  governed 
by  an  aristocracy  in  which  the  Patrons  and  Clients,  as  the 
two  classes  of  society  were  called,  bore  much  the  same 
relation  to  each  other  as  the  lord  and  serf  of  feudal  times. 
The  Patrons  or  Patricians,  as  they  were  called  at  a  later 
date,  were  expected  by  law  and  custom  to  defend  the  Clients 
from  all  wrong  or  oppression  on  the  part  of  others,  while 
the  Clients  were  bound  to  render  certain  services  to  the 
Patrons.  Just  as  the  spread  of  currency  undermined  the 


20  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


personal  relationship  existing  between  the  lord  and  the 
serf  in  the  Middle  Ages,  substituting  money  payments  for 
payments  in  kind,  so  it  may  be  assumed  that  the  relationship 
of  the  Patrons  and  Clients  in  the  early  days  of  Rome  was 
transformed  by  means  of  the  same  agency,  for  it  was  about 
the  time  of  the  spread  of  currency  among  the  Mediterranean 
communities  that  a  new  order  of  things  began  to  come  into 
existence,  when  the  hitherto  harmonious  relationship  existing 
between  the  Patrons  and  Clients  was  replaced  by  one  of 
personal  bitterness.  The  bone  of  contention  was  the 
severity  of  the  law  against  debtors  whereby  the  defaulting 
debtor  became  the  slave  of  the  creditor,  and  as  the  debtor 
in  nearly  all  cases  was  a  Client,  it  created  bad  feeling 
between  the  two  classes. 

The  unpopularity  of  this  law  against  debtors  led  to 
its  abolition  after  the  fall  of  the  Decemvirate  in  the  fifth 
century  before  Christ.  Interest  on  loans  was  limited  to 
io  per  cent,  and  later  to  5  per  cent.,  while  an  attempt 
was  made  to  abolish  usury  altogether.  But  the  laws  to 
abolish  it  proved  ineffectual.  Needy  borrowers  resorted 
to  usurious  lenders,  who  took  good  care  that  repayment 
was  made  one  way  or  another.  The  Patricians  appear  to 
have  become  very  grasping  and  tyrannical,  for  we  read  of  a 
series  of  social  disturbances  between  them  and  the  peasantry 
over  the  question  of  debts  and  the  unwillingness  of  the 
Patricians  to  allow  the  peasantry  to  have  small  holdings 
of  their  own.  These  disturbances  were  at  length  brought 
to  an  end  in  the  year  286  B.c.,  when  the  poorer  citizens 
left  Rome  in  a  body,  out  of  protest,  and  encamped  in  an 
oak  wood  upon  the  Janiculum.  To  appease  this  secession 
they  were  granted  14  jugera  (about  9  acres)  of  land  each 
and  their  debts  reduced.  For  a  hundred  and  fifty  years 
from  this  date  until  the  appearance  of  the  Gracchi  we  hear 
no  more  of  civil  dissensions  in  Rome. 

The  great  change  which  transformed  Rome  from  an 
aristocratic  and  agricultural  society  into  a  capitalistic  and 
military  one  came  about  as  a  result  of  the  Punic  Wars. 
Italy  was  left  in  a  state  of  economic  distress  and  confusion, 
and  the  Romans  were  led  to  embark  on  a  career  of  conquest 
abroad  in  order  to  avoid  troubles  at  home.  Moreover, 


Greece  and  Rome 


21 


the  Punic  Wars  completely  transformed  the  Roman  character. 
From  being  a  community  of  hardy,  thrifty,  self-denying 
and  religious  people  they  became  avaricious,  spendthrift 
and  licentious.  The  immediate  effect  of  these  wars  was 
to  depopulate  rural  Italy,  for  the  substantial  burgesses 
of  the  towns  and  the  stout  yeomen  of  the  country  fell  in 
great  numbers  during  these  wars.  To  this  evil  must  be 
added  the  further  one  that  when  the  campaigns  were  over 
and  the  soldiers  returned  home  they  had  often  contracted 
licentious  tastes  and  formed  irregular  habits  which  were  ill 
suited  to  the  frugal  life  of  the  Italian  husbandman.  So 
it  came  about  that  many  who  possessed  small  estates  were 
eager  to  sell  them  in  order  that  they  might  enjoy  the  irregular 
pleasures  of  the  city,  while  those  who  possessed  nothing  also 
tended  to  gravitate  there.  Thus  a  flood  of  emigration  took 
place  from  the  country  to  the  towns.  The  countryside  became 
more  and  more  depopulated,  while  the  towns,  and  Rome  most 
of  all,  swarmed  with  needy  and  reckless  men  ready  for  any 
outrage. 

These  small  estates  and  holdings  passed  into  the  hands 
of  the  great  Senatorial  families,  who  were  every  day  growing 
richer  by  the  acquisition  of  commands  and  administrative 
posts  which  were  multiplied  by  every  successive  war.  They 
cultivated  them  by  means  of  slaves,  which  as  a  result  of  the 
wars  now  came  on  to  the  market  in  vast  numbers,  and  were 
sold  by  public  auction  to  the  highest  bidders.  The  cheapness 
of  slave  labour  reacted  to  destroy  the  prosperity  of  such 
small  free  cultivators  as  had  remained  on  the  land.  These 
privately  owned  large  estates  in  turn  tended  to  be  replaced 
by  enormous  ones,  administered  by  joint-stock  companies 
which  Pliny  believed  to  be  the  real  cause  of  the  depopulation 
and  decay  of  Italy.  All  the  Public  Lands  of  certain  provinces 
belonged  at  one  time  to  a  few  families,  and  the  Roman 
dominions  in  Africa,  comprising  a  great  part  of  the  north  of 
that  continent,  belonged  to  six  persons  only,  whom  Nero, 
later  on,  thought  well  to  put  to  death. 

The  growth  of  these  joint-stock  companies  which  made 
themselves  the  masters  of  the  commercial  movement  is 
to  be  traced  to  a  lav/,  passed  just  before  the  second  Punic 
War,  which  made  it  illegal  for  Senators  to  engage  in  any 


22  A  GuildsmarCs  Interpretation  of  History 


commercial  venture.  In  order,  therefore,  to  furnish  supplies 
for  the  army  and  navy  it  became  necessary  to  form  companies 
with  sufficient  capital  to  undertake  the  contracts,  and  in 
these  companies  all  the  wealthy  Romans,  as  well  as  officers 
of  State,  soldiers  and  politicians,  held  shares.  The  Patrician 
*  families  were  no  exception  to  this  rule,  though  they  preferred 
to  hold  their  shares  in  secret,  not  caring  to  be  compromised 
in  the  eyes  of  the  public,  or  to  show  that  they  were  in  any 
way  indebted  to  the  bankers  and  publicani  (tax-gatherers), 
who  were  at  the  head  of  the  commercial  movement  and 
until  the  fall  of  the  Republic  were  the  greatest  power  in 
Rome.  Well  has  it  been  said  that  “  the  history  of  Roman 
Property  Law  is  the  history  of  the  assimilation  of  res  mancipi 
to  res  nec  mancipi  ; 1  in  other  words,  the  assimilation  of  real 
estate  to  movable  property,  of  land  to  currency,  of  aristocracy 
to  plutocracy. 

It  was  thus  in  Rome,  as  in  Greece,  that  uncontrolled 
currency  replaced  the  class  divisions  based  upon  differences 
of  function  by  class  divisions  based  upon  differences  of 
wealth.  Financial  companies  invaded  all  the  conquered 
nations.  There  were  companies  for  Sicily,  for  Asia,  for 
Greece,  Macedonia,  Africa,  Bithynia,  Cilicia,  Syria,  Judea, 
Spain  and  Gaul.  They  had  their  headquarters  at  Rome, 
and  the  Forum  became  a  kind  of  stock-exchange  in  which 
the  buying  or  selling  of  shares  was  always  going  on  and 
where  every  man  was  trying  to  outwit  his  neighbour.  These 
companies  speculated  in  everything :  in  land,  building, 
mines,  transport  and  supplies  for  the  army  and  navy,  and  in 
the  customs.  This  latter  was  the  central  source  of  corruption. 
Every  five  years  the  taxes  of  the  provinces  were  put  up  to 
public  auction,  and  that  company  which  made  the  highest 
bid  secured  the  contract  if  proper  security  could  be  given. 
When  the  contract  was  secured  the  successful  company 
paid  into  the  Imperial  Treasury  the  amount  of  their  bid 
and  made  what  profit  they  could  out  of  the  transaction. 
All  they  collected  over  and  above  the  amount  of  their  contract 
they  kept  for  themselves.  Naturally  the  system  led  to 
extortion,  since  the  more  money  the  companies  could  extort 
from  the  taxpayers  the  greater  was  their  profit.  The 

1  Sir  Henry  Maine,  A  ncient  Law,  p.  283. 


Greece  and  Rome 


23 


extortions  incident  to  this  iniquitous  system  form  a  principal 
topic  in  the  provincial  history  of  Rome,  for  the  Roman 
Governors  found  it  to  their  interest  to  support  the  tax- 
gatherers  on  condition  of  sharing  in  the  plunder.  It  has 
been  said  that  a  Roman  Governor  needed  to  make  three 
fortunes.  The  first  was  to  provide  him  with  the  means  of 
buying  the  suffrages  of  the  people  or  of  discharging  the 
debts  incurred  in  buying  them  ;  the  second  was  to  keep 
for  himself  ;  and  the  third  was  to  provide  him  with  the 
wherewithal  to  fight  the  actions  in  the  courts  which  were 
certain  to  be  brought  against  him  when  he  relinquished 
office. 

It  goes  without  saying  that  a  system  so  corrupt  could 
not  but  react  to  corrupt  Rome  itself.  The  frequent  laws 
against  bribery  at  elections  which  may  be  dated  from  the 
year  181  b.c.  testify  to  the  change  that  was  taking  place. 
While  money  was  extorted  from  the  provincials,  Rome 
itself  escaped  taxation  altogether,  and  this  reacted  to  render 
the  Senate  an  entirely  irresponsible  body,  for  when  they 
had  now  no  longer  any  need  to  ask  the  people  for  money 
they  were  subject  to  no  real  control  and  no  obstacle  stood 
in  the  way  of  their  acting  as  best  suited  their  own  personal 
interest.  All  lucrative  employments  were  seized  by  members 
of  the  great  Senatorial  families,  while  a  family  that  had  once 
been  ennobled  by  office  had  so  many  opportunities  for  making 
money  that  it  became  more  difficult  every  day  for  a  new 
man  to  make  his  way  to  the  Consulship  or  even  into  the 
Senate,  which  was  fast  becoming  a  hereditary  body  of 
legislators.  It  was  only  when  difficult  military  services 
were  required  that  they  called  in  the  services  of  independent 
men. 

Now  that  successful  warfare  had  proved  itself  so  profit¬ 
able  to  the  Senatorial  families  and  the  people  had  entirely 
lost  control  over  them,  the  lust  for  conquest  became 
general.  Wars  were  now  no  longer  defensive,  even  in  pretence. 
Like  the  Germans,  who  appear  to  have  copied  the  methods 
of  the  Romans,  the  Senate  resorted  to  the  most  detestable 
practices  in  order  to  create  internal  dissensions  in  other 
countries.  They  were  determined  to  have  a  voice  in  all 
matters  within  their  sphere  of  interest,  to  make  every  possible 


24  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


excuse  for  Roman  interference.  Senatorial  commissions 
were  continually  being  despatched  to  arrange  the  affairs 
of  other  nations,  for  the  Roman  Senator  had  no  doubt  what¬ 
soever  in  his  mind  that  his  people  were  the  strongest  and 
most  competent  to  rule  the  world.  And  in  the  furtherance 
of  their  aims  they  were  entirely  unscrupulous.  The  arrogance 
and  brutality  of  this  new  aristocracy  of  wealth  knew  no 
limits.  They  destroyed  Carthage  and  Corinth  out  of  com¬ 
mercial  rivalry,  while  Cicero  relates  that  the  Senate  caused 
the  vineyards  and  olive-groves  of  Gaul  to  be  destroyed, 
in  order  to  avoid  a  damaging  competition  with  the  rich 
Roman  landlords,1  just  as  the  Germans  for  similar  reasons 
sought  to  destroy  the  towns  and  industries  of  Belgium  and 
Northern  France. 

This  period  of  Roman  history  should  be  particularly 
interesting  to  us,  as  it  presents  so  many  striking  analogies 
to  the  present  day.  Just  as  the  war  promoted  by  the 
militarist  capitalism  of  Germany  has  brought  in  its  train 
Bolshevism  and  the  Class  War,  so  the  militarist  capitalism 
of  Rome  bore  fruit  in  the  slave  revolts.  As  early  as  181  B.c. 
7,000  slaves  in  Apulia  were  condemned  to  death  for  brigand¬ 
age,  where  travelling  had  become  dangerous  without  an 
armed  retinue.  From  attacking  travellers  they  had  begun 
to  plunder  the  smaller  country  houses,  and  all  except  the 
very  rich  were  obliged  to  leave  the  country.  But  there 
was  not  any  general  revolt  until  133  b.c.,  when  the  slaves 
of  Sicily  revolted.  The  Romans  there  were  now  to  feel 
the  vengeance  of  men  brutalized  by  oppression.  Clad 
in  skins,  and  armed  with  stakes  and  reaping-hooks,  they  broke 
into  the  houses  and  massacred  all  persons  of  free  condition, 
from  the  old  man  and  matron  to  the  infant  in  arms.  Once 
the  standard  of  revolt  was  raised,  thousands  joined  in, 
while  the  insurrection  not  only  spread  over  the  whole  of 
the  island,  but  broke  out  in  various  parts  of  the  Empire. 
No  one  could  tell  where  it  would  stop.  For  a  time  they 
met  with  success,  and  defeated  an  army  of  8,000  Romans, 
but  in  the  end  the  revolt  was  suppressed  with  great  cruelty, 
though  it  took  two  years  to  effect  it.  A  second  Slave  War 
broke  out  in  Sicily  thirty  years  later,  and  a  third  after  the 

1  Cicero,  De  Republic  a,  III.  6. 


Greece  and  Borne 


95 


lapse  of  another  thirty/  years,  the  latter  being  led  by  a 
gladiator  named  Spartacus,  after  whom  the  German  Bolsheviks 
named  their  secret  organization.  Both  of  these  revolts 
were  suppressed  like  the  first  one,  and  when  at  length  slavery 
came  to  an  end  it  was  not  due  to  a  successful  revolt  but 
to  a  changed  attitude  of  the  Roman  citizen  towards  the 
institution  of  slavery.  “  During  the  first  century  of  the 
Empire,  chiefly  under  the  influence  of  the  Stoic  philosophy, 
as  later  under  that  of  Christianity,  there  had  been  growing 
up  a  feeling  that  a  slave  was,  after  all,  a  human  being,  and 
had  some  claim  to  be  treated  as  such  under  the  Roman  law. 
Antoninus  followed  out  this  idea  both  in  legislation  and  in 
his  private  life,  as  did  his  successor  also,  who  adored  his 
memory.  They  limited  the  right  of  a  master  over  his 
slaves  in  several  ways  ;  ordaining  that  if  cruelty  were  proved 
against  a  master,  he  should  be  compelled  to  sell  the  slave 
he  had  ill-treated.” 1  By  such  means  slavery  gradually 
gives  way  to  Feudalism,  which  we  shall  consider  in  a  later 
chapter. 

Though  these  revolts  were  successfully  suppressed,  they 
shook  the  complacency  of  the  Romans.  A  force  was  set 
in  motion  which  by  a  natural  sequence  led  to  the  Civil  Wars 
and  eventually  to  the  Dictatorship  and  the  Empire.  Before 
the  Slave  War  actually  broke  out  it  was  becoming  evident 
to  thinking  men  that  things  could  not  go  on  in  the  way  they 
were  going  and  that  reform  was  becoming  a  matter  of  urgency. 
Tiberius  Gracchus,  who  now  came  to  the  front  as  a  reformer, 
was  the  son  of  one  of  the  few  Romans  in  whom  any  public 
spirit  had  survived.  When  travelling  through  Etruria  he  had 
noted  her  broad  lands  tilled,  not  by  free  yeoman  as  of  old, 
but  by  slaves.  Soon  after  this  the  Slave  War  broke  out,  and 
as  he  had  previously  spoken  his  mind  freely  on  this  matter, 
public  opinion  in  Rome  fastened  on  him  as  the  man  to  under¬ 
take  the  work  of  reform.  After  being  elected  a  Tribune, 
he  proposed  to  revive  the  Licinian  Law  of  364  b.c.  by  which 
it  was  enacted  that  no  head  of  a  family  could  hold  more 
than  500  jugera  (nearly  320  acres)  of  the  Public  Land, 
modifying  it  only  to  the  extent  that  permission  was  to  be 
given  to  every  son  to  hold  half  that  quantity  in  addition 

1  Rome,  by  W.  Warde  Fowler,  p.  244. 


26  A  Guildsmari’s  Interpretation  of  History 


on  becoming  his  own  master.  It  should  be  explained  that 
by  Public  Land  was  meant  land  owned  by  the  Roman  State 
of  which  there  was  much  ;  for  the  Senate  had  retained  its 
hold  on  a  large  part  of  the  land  of  Italy  acquired  by  Rome, 
though  it  was  mostly  leased  to  the  great  proprietors.  To 
propose,  therefore,  that  no  one  should  hold  more  than  500 
jugera  was  to  attack  the  great  landholders  and  companies 
who  administered  the  vast  estates,  worked  by  slave  labour, 
and  to  seek  to  replace  them  by  a  free  yeomanry.  Those 
who  gave  up  possession  were  to  receive  compensation  for 
improvements  they  had  effected. 

After  some  difficulty  Gracchus  succeeded  in  getting 
his  bill  carried  by  acclamation  by  the  Assembly  of  Tribes. 
Within  certain  limits  it  was  put  into  operation,  and  there 
is  reason  to  believe  that  it  did  some  good  in  regard  both 
to  depopulation  and  agriculture.  But  in  order  to  get  it 
carried  during  his  year  of  office — and  if  he  could  not  manage 
it  then  he  would  have  to  give  it  up  for  some  time — he  de¬ 
liberately  broke  with  law  and  usage  by  carrying  a  bill  deposing 
the  Tribune  who  acted  for  the  Senate  and  was  opposed  to 
him.  This  violent  and  irregular  procedure  provoked  a 
resistance  which  cost  him  his  life.  He  had  laid  himself 
open  to  the  charge  of  attempting  to  make  himself  master 
of  the  State,  and  as  it  was  a  maxim  of  Roman  Law  that 
the  man  who  aimed  at  tyranny  might  be  slain  by  any  one, 
his  enemies  were  not  slow  to  take  advantage  of  his  imprudence. 
He  and  many  of  his  supporters  were  killed  on  the  Capitol 
when  he  had  been  Tribune  for  seven  months,  and  the  populace 
of  Rome  made  no  attempt  to  save  him.  Nine  years  later 
his  brother  Caius  Gracchus  was  elected  Tribune  and  took 
up  his  work,  but  he  and  his  supporters  were  likewise  slain 
by  their  political  enemies. 

Whatever  the  Gracchi  failed  to  do,  they  certainly  shook 
the  power  and  prestige  of  the  Senate.  They  gave  it  a  blow 
from  which  it  never  recovered.  The  cruel  times  that  followed 
made  the  best  men  of  both  parties  regret  the  untimely  end 
of  those  who  had  sacrificed  wealth,  rank  and  tranquillity 
in  the  hope  of  reforming  the  State  by  peaceful  methods. 
But  it  was  not  to  be  done.  The  path  to  reform  was  blocked 
by  the  forms  of  a  constitution  which  had  served  their  purpose 


Greece  and  Rome 


27 


while  Rome  was  a  small  City  State,  but  became  an  anachronism 
when  Rome  became  a  world-wide  Empire  ;  by  the  narrow 
spirit  of  the  oligarchical  faction,  which  was  opposed  to  all 
change  from  self-interested  reasons  ;  and  lastly  by  the  mean 
and  fickle  temper  of  the  mongrel  population  of  Rome  whose 
power  was  sovereign  in  legislation  and  elections.  These 
three  factors  in  the  situation  reacted  upon  each  other,  and 
finally  precipitated  political  chaos.  The  refusal  of  the 
Senate  to  face  boldly  the  situation  which  was  developing 
and  their  resolve  to  keep  power  entirely  in  their  own  hands 
ended  by  bringing  them  into  contempt.  They  refused  to 
listen  to  the  Gracchi ;  they  had  to  listen  to  Marius.  It 
was  a  true  epigram  that  ran  “  the  blood  of  Gracchus  was 
the  seed  sown  and  Marius  was  the  fruit/'  For  there  is  a 
definite  connection  between  the  two.  It  was  precisely 
because  the  Senate  refused  the  legitimate  demands  of  reform 
that  a  situation  developed  which  mastered  them.  The 
Senate,  like  our  own  Government,  being  entirely  under  the 
control  of  capitalist  influences,  developed  that  same  total 
incapacity  to  act  except  when  pressure  was  brought  to  bear 
upon  it.  And  so  it  happened  that  a  time  came  when  un¬ 
scrupulous  adventurers  rose  to  power  who  understood  the 
art  of  exploiting  their  stupidity.  While  the  oligarchy 
controlling  the  Senate  found  themselves  able  to  suppress 
revolts  against  their  power  from  below,  they  found  them¬ 
selves  powerless  to  control  the  growing  power  of  their  own 
generals,  the  jealousies  between  whom  became  a  constant 
source  of  danger  and  anxiety  to  the  State,  whose  interests 
they  were  supposed  to  serve,  and  led  eventually  to  the  civil 
wars  which  in  the  last  century  before  Christ  brought  the 
whole  Roman  system  to  the  very  brink  of  ruin. 

The  reason  for  these  troubles  is  not  far  to  seek.  When 
Tiberius  Gracchus  said,  “  The  wild  animals  of  Italy  have  their 
dens  and  lairs  ;  the  men  who  have  fought  for  Italy  have 
light  and  air  and  nothing  more.  They  are  styled  the  masters 
of  the  world,  though  they  have  not  a  clod  of  earth  they 
can  call  their  own,”  he  put  his  finger  on  the  central  weakness 
of  the  Roman  policy  of  warfare  which  created  in  Italy  a 
landless  proletariat  of  desperate  men.  It  became  clearer 
to  the  people  every  day  that  the  governing  class  expected 


28 


A  Guild  smart  $  Interpretation  of  History 

them  to  do  the  fighting  while  they  themselves  were  to  take 
all  the  plunder.  This  realization  led  to  the  growth  of 
dissatisfaction  which  broke  loose  when  the  governing  class, 
by  opposing  the  reforms  of  Gracchus,  destroyed  the  confidence 
of  the  people  in  their  good  intentions.  The  consequence 
was  that  as  nobody  felt  any  loyalty  to  the  Government, 
the  instinct  of  loyalty  which  is  natural  to  the  vast  majority 
of  men  was  transferred  from  the  Republic  to  individual 
generals,  whom  they  regarded  as  their  patrons.  The  Roman 
armies,  which  were  such  excellent  fighting  machines,  were 
composed  of  the  soldiers  of  Marius,  of  Sulla,  of  Pompey 
or  of  Caesar.  Their  swords  were  at  the  command  of  any 
leader  who  offered  a  chance  of  booty.  This  new  state  of 
things,  which  reached  its  height  during  the  civil  wars,  took 
its  origin  with  the  great  Scipio.  He  had  been  refused  levies 
by  the  Senate  which  he  deemed  necessary  for  the  invasion 
of  Africa,  and  he  raised  volunteers  on  his  own  credit,  rewarding 
them  with  grants  of  land  in  Southern  Italy.  Marius  and 
Sulla  held  out  prospects  of  booty  to  the  men  who  served 
under  them,  and  so  on  until  the  fall  of  the  Empire — the 
loyalty  of  the  soldiers  had  to  be  bought.  It  was  the  natural 
and  inevitable  consequence  of  the  destruction  of  a  free 
yeomanry  in  Italy  and  the  rise  of  a  professional  soldier 
class.  It  is  thus  to  be  seen  that  there  is  a  very  definite 
connection  between  the  attitude  of  the  governing  class  to 
the  reforms  of  Gracchus  and  the  civil  wars  that  followed 
forty-five  years  later  and  which  were  finally  brought  to  an 
end  by  the  triumph  of  Augustus. 

With  the  advent  of  Augustus  a  new  chapter  in  Roman 
history  is  opened.  The  Republic  gives  way  to  the  Empire, 
Roman  society  takes  a  new  lease  of  life  ;  order  begins  to 
get  the  upper  hand  of  anarchy.  The  immediate  cause  of 
the  change  was  that  the  Senate  and  Roman  people,  after 
bitter  experience  became  at  last  reconciled  to  the  idea  of 
despotism.  They  no  longer  claimed  the  exclusive  right  to 
deal  with  the  ever-increasing  administrative  business  of 
the  Empire,  and  allowed  Augustus  a  free  hand  to  deal  with 
the  chaos  which  had  overtaken  it  as  best  he  could.  This 
he  did  in  the  only  way  it  is  possible  for  a  despot  to  govern — 
by  means  of  a  highly  centralized  bureaucracy,  which  he 


Greece  and  Rome 


29 


superimposed,  over  popular  institutions,  many  of  which  he 
restored,  in  form  at  least,  where  they  had  fallen  into  decay. 

This  may  not  have  been  an  ideal  solution  of  the  problems 
of  the  Roman  Empire,  but  it  was  eminently  practical.  It  f 

preserved  Roman  civilization  for  centuries  from  the  fear  of 
invasion  from  without  and  from  disruption  from  within. 

Augustus  curbed  the  power  of  the  capitalists  and  placed 
the  taxation  of  the  Empire  on  a  new  basis  by  the  preparation 
of  a  Survey  in  which  every  house,  field  and  wood  was  duly 
valued  by  responsible  officials,  thus  getting  rid  once  and  for 
all  of  the  system  of  extortion  which  was  the  central  source 
of  political  corruption.  With  his  capable  and  loyal  helper 
Agrippa,  he  travelled  over  the  whole  Empire  working  hard 
at  making  settlements  of  all  kinds,  and  carrying  on  military 
operations  where  they  were  absolutely  necessary.  Augustus 
found  the  Empire  in  a  state  of  chaos,  he  left  it  a  strongly 
compacted  union  of  provinces  and  dependent  kingdoms. 

But  Augustus  was  too  clear-headed  a  man  to  trust  entirely 
to  the  machinery  of  State.  He  understood  that  the  satis¬ 
factory  working  of  any  system  of  government  depended 
ultimately  on  the  character  of  the  people,  and  so  he  sought 
to  promote  a  revival  of  the  old  Roman  spirit.  He  called 
the  poets  to  his  aid,  and  is  said  to  have  suggested  to  Virgil 
the  subject  of  the  Mneid ,  which  came  to  be  looked  upon  as 
almost  a  sacred  book,  loved  and  honoured  as  much  by 
Christian  Fathers  as  by  Pagan  scholars.  He  saw  that  if 
his  government  was  to  be  stable,  Rome  and  Italy  must  be 
loyal,  contented  and  at  peace  ;  and  this  he  secured  by 
what  in  these  days  is  called  welfare  work.  “  The  city  of 
Rome,  with  a  population  of  perhaps  half  a  million,  of  all 
races  and  degrees,  had  been  a  constant  anxiety  to  Augustus 
so  far,  and  had  exercised  far  more  power  in  the  Empire 
than  such  a  mixed  and  idle  population  was  entitled  to. 

He  saw  that  this  population  must  be  well  policed,  and 
induced  to  keep  itself  in  order  as  far  as  possible  ;  that  it 
must  be  made  quite  comfortable,  run  no  risk  of  starvation, 
have  confidence  in  the  goodwill  of  the  gods,  and  enjoy  plenty 
of  amusements.  Above  all,  it  must  believe  in  himself, 
in  order  to  be  loyal  to  his  policy.  When  he  returned  to 
Rome  after  crushing  Antony  and  Cleopatra,  the  Romans 


d 


30  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


were  already  disposed  to  believe  in  him,  and  he  did  all  he 
could  to  make  them  permanently  and  freely  loyal.  He 
divided  the  city  into  new  sections  for  police  purposes,  and 
recruited  corps  of  watchmen  from  the  free  population ; 
he  restored  temples  and  priesthoods,  erected  many  pleasant 
and  convenient  public  buildings  (this  incidentally  giving 
plenty  of  employment),  organized  the  supply  of  corn  and 
of  water,  and  encouraged  public  amusements  by  his  own 
presence  at  them.  He  took  care  that  no  one  should  starve, 
or  become  so  uncomfortable  as  to  murmur  or  rebel.  On 
the  other  hand,  he  did  not  mean  this  motley  population 
to  continue  to  have  undue  influence  on  the  affairs  of  the 
Empire.  True,  he  gave  them  back  their  Free  State,  and 
you  might  see  magistrates,  Senate  and  assemblies  in  the 
city,  just  as  under  the  Republic.  But  the  people  of  the 
city  henceforth  had  little  political  power.  The  consuls 
and  Senate,  indeed,  were  far  from  idle,  but  the  assemblies 
for  election  and  legislation  soon  ceased  to  be  realities.  In 
elections  no  money  was  now  to  be  gained  by  a  vote,  and 
in  legislation  the  people  were  quite  content  with  sanctioning 
the  wisdom  of  Augustus  and  his  advisers.”  1 

Though  the  reforms  of  Augustus  preserved  the  Empire 
for  centuries,  they  preserved  it  at  the  expense  of  its  vitality, 
for  what  Augustus  introduced  was  essentially  what  in  these 
days  we  call  the  Servile  State.  He  maintained  order  by 
undermining  the  independence  and  initiative  of  the  citizens. 
This  weakness  gradually  made  itself  felt,  for  as  time  wore 
on  the  Roman  Empire  became  increasingly  an  automatic 
movement  of  machinery  dependent  entirely  on  the  Caesar 
of  Rome.  The  great  extension  of  governmental  control 
led  eventually  to  the  incorporation  of  the  Collegia  as  sub¬ 
ordinate  adjuncts  of  the  State.  Exactly  what  these  Collegia 
originally  were  or  eventually  became  we  are  not  quite  sure, 
for  our  information  about  them  is  very  scanty,  and  it  is 
therefore  unwise  to  call  them  Guilds.  It  is  probable  they 
were  originally  friendly  societies,  and  we  know  that  in  the 
early  days  of  the  Empire  they  began  to  undertake  public 
duties.  The  Collegia  of  the  building  trade,  for  instance, 
began  to  undertake  the  duties  of  a  fire-brigade  in  Roman 

1  Rome,  by  W.  Warde  Fowler,  pp.  196-7. 


Greece  and  Rome 


31 


towns,  and  this  system  of  delegating  functions  to  organized 
groups  of  workers  led  to  the  formation  of  Collegia  in  different 
trades.  The  Government  having  assumed  responsibility 
for  the  provision  of  an  adequate  food  supply,  privileges  f 

were  granted  to  bakers,  corn  merchants  and  shippers  in 
the  provinces.  This  happened  at  least  as  early  as  the  reign 
of  Antoninus  Pius.  In  the  year  a.d.  271  all  the  incorporated 
Collegia  were  pressed  into  public  service  by  Aurelian  in 
order  to  fortify  Rome,  and  this  appears  to  have  been  the 
beginning  of  a  closer  association  between  the  Collegia  and 
the  State.  Severus  Alexander,  we  are  told,  “  pursued  the 
old  policy  of  stimulating  enterprise  by  bounties/’  and 
incorporated  “  all  industries  whatsoever  ”  in  Guilds  and 
regulated  their  status  in  the  eyes  of  the  law,  which  was 
doubtless  a  step  in  the  direction  of  finally  converting  them 
into  the  strictly  hereditary  castes  whose  existence  is  pre¬ 
supposed  by  the  legislation  of  the  Constantinian  epoch. 

Though  the  whole  subject  is  one  of  great  uncertainty,  it 
does  appear  that  efforts  were  made  in  Rome  to  balance  the 
centralizing  movement  by  decentralization  as  much  as 
possible,  and  that  group  organization  began  to  come  into 
existence.1 

The  great  defect  in  the  constitution  of  the  Empire  was 
that  as  the  position  of  Emperor  was  elective  the  succession 
was  never  guaranteed,  and  in  the  third  century  after  Christ 
this  led  to  serious  disorders,  which,  lasting  for  a  hundred 
years,  were  finally  brought  to  a  close  by  the  Emperor  Diocle¬ 
tian.  But  these  things  were  only  incidents  in  a  decline 
in  which  a  certain  demoralization  overtook  everything. 

The  provincial  cities  lost  their  initiative  and  energy.  They 
became  too  dependent  upon  the  centralized  Government 
which  daily  became  more  paternal.  The  old  virtues  of 
courage  and  sacrifice  vanished  before  the  growth  of  pessimism 
in  which  the  populations,  enervated  by  luxury  and  sensuality, 
became  feebler  and  feebler,  until  finally  they  were  unable 
any  longer  to  offer  effective  resistance  to  the  inroads  of  the 
barbarians. 

We  may  be  sure  then  that  Roman  civilization  would 

1  See  The  Roman  Empire,  by  H.  Stuart  Jones,  pp.  272-3.  Also  Two 
Thousand  Years  of  Guild  Life,  by  J.  M.  Lambert,  pp.  22-31. 


d 


32  A  Guildsmaris  Interpretation  of  History 


not  have  fallen  had  not  Roman  society  suffered  from  internal 
decay.  The  reforms  of  Augustus  merely  delayed  the  final 
catastrophe  ;  they  could  not  prevent  it,  for  Roman  civiliza¬ 
tion  for  centuries  before,  as  we  have  seen,  had  been  rotten 
at  the  core.  Successful  warfare  had  made  Rome  wealthy, 
but  it  left  the  increased  wealth  of  the  community  entirely 
at  the  mercy  of  the  jugglers  of  finance,  who  were  destitute 
of  patriotism  except  in  so  far  as  its  claims  coincided  with 
the  protection  of  their  interests.  It  was  to  protect  the 
interests  of  these  economic  vampires  that  the  enlightened 
system  of  Roman  Law  was  formulated.  So  often  have 
we  been  reminded  of  the  gift  that  Roman  Law  is  to  civilization 
that  most  people  have  accepted  it  without  question,  little 
suspecting  the  iniquity  that  reigns  at  its  heart.  For  the 
aim  of  Roman  Law,  unlike  Greek  Law,  was  not  to  secure 
justice  but  to  bolster  up  a  corrupt  society  in  the  interests 
of  public  order.  Uncontrolled  currency  having  led  to 
capitalism  and  capitalism  having  given  rise  to  social  disorders, 
Roman  Law  stepped  into  the  breach  and  sought  by  legalizing 
injustices  to  preserve  order.  It  was  not  concerned  with 
moral  principles.  Its  aim  was  not,  like  Mediaeval  Law,  to 
enable  good  men  to  live  among  bad  1  but  to  enable  rich  men 
to  live  among  poor.  This  it  did  by  following  the  line  of 
least  resistance,  which  was  to  give  legal  sanction  to  social 
injustices  once  established.  Hence  the  infamous  Statute 
of  Limitations,  by  which,  after  the  expiration  of  a  certain 
period,  the  actual  holder  of  an  estate  could  no  longer  be 
compelled  to  restore  it  to  the  true  owner,  unless  the  latter 
should  be  able  to  show  that  within  the  prescribed  time  he 
had  demanded  restitution  with  all  the  prescribed  formalities. 
Well  did  Heine  say  of  this  last  condition  that  it  “  opened 
wide  the  door  of  chicanery,  particularly  in  a  state  where 
despotism  and  jurisprudence  were  at  their  zenith,  and  where 
the  unjust  possessor  had  at  command  all  means  of  intimida¬ 
tion,  especially  against  the  poor  who  might  be  unable  to  defray 

1  “This  is  the  reason  why  the  law  was  made,  that  the  wickedness  of  man 
should  be  restrained  through  fear  of  it,  and  that  good  men  could  safely  live 
among  bad  men  ;  and  that  bad  men  should  be  punished  and  cease  to  do  evil 
for  fear  of  the  punishment.”  (From  the  Fuero  Juzgo,  a  collection  of  laws. 
Gothic  and  Roman  in  origin,  made  by  the  Hispano-Gothic  King  Chindavinto, 
a.d.  640.  In  the  National  Library  of  Spain,  Madrid.) 


Greece  and  Rome 


33 


the  cost  of  litigation.  The  Roman  was  both  soldier  and 
lawyer,  and  that  which  he  conquered  with  the  strong  arm 
he  knew  how  to  defend  by  the  tricks  of  law.  Only  a  nation 
of  robbers  and  casuists  could  have  invented  the  Law  of 
Prescription,  the  Statute  of  Limitations,  and  consecrated 
it  in  that  detestable  book  which  may  be  called  the  bible 
of  the  Devil — I  mean  the  codex  of  Roman  Civil  Law.”  1 
But  the  evil  does  not  end  here.  Not  only  did  the  revived 
study  of  Roman  Law  during  the  Middle  Ages  operate  to 
undermine  the  communal  relations  of  society  and  re-establish 
private  property,  but  in  more  recent  times  it  has  brought 
confusion  into  thought  about  social  questions  by  diverting 
attention  from  the  primary  issue  of  currency  and  its  regulation 
to  concentrate  it  upon  the  relatively  secondary  issue  of 
property.  We  shall  see  its  sinister  influence  at  work  corrupt¬ 
ing  the  thought  of  the  French  Revolution  as  indeed  of  the 
Socialist  Movement  to-day. 

1  Confessions,  by  Heinrich  Heine. 


CHAPTER  II 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  GUILDS 

The  underlying  cause  of  the  failure  of  Greece  and  Rome 
to  grapple  with  the  economic  problems  which  followed  the 
introduction  of  currency  is  to  be  found  in  the  Pagan  philo¬ 
sophy  of  life.  That  philosophy  was  one  of  self-sufficiency 
and  self-assertiveness  on  a  basis  of  senuous  enjoyment, 
and  as  such  was  incapable  of  exercising  a  restraining 
influence  upon  men  when  and  where  foreign  trade  and 
successful  warfare  brought  great  wealth  within  their  reach. 
The  worship  of  materialism  had  ended  in  leaving  society 
at  the  mercy  of  economic  problems  which  eluded  the  efforts 
of  statesmen  and  reformers  alike.  If,  therefore,  society 
were  ever  again  to  recover  its  old-time  solidarity  and  be 
lifted  out  of  the  slough  of  despondency  into  which  it  had 
fallen,  it  was  essential  that  life  and  its  problems  should  be 
faced  in  a  spirit  fundamentally  different  from  that  of 
Paganism.  This  new  spirit  the  world  found  in  Christianity  : 
with  the  spread  of  its  teachings  the  tide  begins  to  turn 
and  a  new  chapter  opened  in  the  history  of  mankind. 

In  these  days  we  are  so  accustomed  to  regard  religious 
faith  as  something  essentially  divorced  from  the  ordinary 
routine  of  life  that  it  is  difficult  to  realize  that  Christianity 
in  the  Early  Church  was  as  much  a  gospel  of  social  salvation 
in  this  world  as  of  happiness  in  a  life  to  come.  The  two 
went  hand  in  hand,  and  it  was  this  that  gave  Christianity 
the  wonderful  power  which  made  it  such  a  driving  force. 
The  Early  Church  continued  the  communistic  tradition  of 
the  Apostles.  Thus  we  read  in  Acts  ii.  : — 

Then  they  which  gladly  received  this  word  were  baptized  ;  and  the 
same  day  there  were  added  unto  them  about  three  thousand  souls.  And 
they  continued  steadfastly  in  the  apostles’  doctrine  and  fellowship,  and  in 
breaking  of  bread,  and  in  prayers.  And  fear  came  upon  every  soul ;  and 

34 


Christianity  and  the  Guilds 


35 


many  wonders  and  signs  were  done  by  the  apostles.  And  all  that  believed 
were  together,  and  had  all  things  common,  and  parted  them  to  all  men,  as 
every  man  had  need. 


And  again,  at  the  end  of  Acts  iv.  there  is  to  be  found 
another  description  of  their  life: — 

And  the  multitude  of  them  that  believed  were  of  one  heart  and  of  one 
soul :  neither  said  any  of  them  that  aught  of  the  things  which  he  possessed 
was  his  own  ;  but  they  had  all  things  in  common.  And  with  great  power 
gave  the  apostles  witness  of  the  resurrection  of  the  Lord  Jesus  :  and  great 
grace  was  upon  them  all.  Neither  was  there  any  among  them  that  lacked  ; 
for  as  many  as  were  possessors  of  lands  or  houses  sold  them,  and  brought 
the  price  of  the  things  that  were  sold,  and  laid  them  down  at  the  apostles' 
feet  :  and  distribution  was  made  unto  every  man  according  as  he  had  need. 
And  Joses,  who  by  the  apostles  was  surnamed  Barnabas  (which  is,  being 
interpreted,  the  son  of  consolation),  a  Levite,  and  of  the  country  of  Cyprus, 
having  land,  sold  it,  and  brought  the  money,  and  laid  it  at  the  apostles’  feet. 

Looking  at  Christianity  in  the  light  of  these  texts,  we 
find  ourselves  in  the  presence  of  a  creed  whose  aim  it  was 
to  promote  communal  relationships  in  society,  for  it  is 
manifest  that  in  the  mind  of  the  Early  Christians  the 
Fatherhood  of  God  involved  the  Brotherhood  of  man,  and 
vice  versa.  If  men  and  women  were  to  live  together  as 
equals,  if  they  were  to  share  a  common  life  and  hold  goods 
in  common,  they  must  have  in  common  ideas  as  well  as 
goods,  or  there  would  be  no  cement  to  bind  them  together. 
In  order  that  common  ideas  might  prevail  amongst  them, 
they  must  acknowledge  some  supreme  authority,  some 
principle  of  conduct  which  was  above  and  beyond  personal 
opinion.  Above  all,  they  must  be  fortified  in  spirit  against 
any  temptation  to  private  gain.  If  wealth  was  not  to 
obtain  a  hold  upon  them  they  must  cultivate  an  attitude 
of  indifference  towards  riches.  This  was  the  gospel  of 
Christ  in  its  social  aspect.  It  taught  men  not  to  despise 
the  world  but  to  renounce  it,  in  order  that  they  might 
acquire  the  strength  to  conquer.  In  teaching  this  gospel 
Christianity  introduced  the  world  to  a  new  moral  principle. 
Hitherto  the  world  was  divided  between  two  opposed  theories 
of  life  or  moral  principles — Paganism  and  Buddhism.  The 
gospel  of  Paganism  had  been  to  urge  men  to  conquer  the 
world,  and  it  found  an  end  in  despondency.  Buddhism, 
realizing  the  moral  failure  which  must  necessarily  follow 


36  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


the  pursuit  of  purely  material  aims,  sought  to  solve  the 
problem  by  teaching  men  to  renounce  the  world,  which 
it  taught  was  illusion.  Such  an  attitude  towards  life  is 
repugnant  to  healthy-minded  men,  as  being  merely  an 
evasion  of  the  whole  problem  of  life.  Nevertheless,  the 
choice  was  ultimately  between  Paganism  and  Buddhism — 
for  all  religions  clove  to  one  or  the  other  idea,  until  Chris¬ 
tianity  appeared  in  the  world,  when  by  teaching  men  to 
renounce  the  world  in  order  that  they  might  conquer  it, 
it  fused  the  two  apparently  contradictory  moral  principles. 
It  sought,  as  it  were,  by  a  strong  appeal  to  what  was  centri¬ 
petal  in  his  nature,  to  counteract  the  natural  centrifugal 
tendencies  in  man.  It  was  through  this  new  moral  principle 
that  Christianity  triumphed,  for  it  proved  itself  to  be  a 
principle  of  great  dynamic  power,  capable  of  bracing  up 
the  moral  fibre,  and  inspiring  heroism  and  a  great  awakening 
of  human  forces.  The  founders  of  Christianity  conclude 
by  an  earnest  invocation  of  the  end  of  the  world — i.e.  the 
end  of  the  existing  social  order,  and  not  of  the  earth,  as  is 
generally  supposed — and  strange  to  say,  their  invocation 
was  realized.  The  lowly  quiet  man  not  desirous  of  riches 
came  into  his  own.  He  began  to  be  respected,  and  was 
no  longer  treated  with  scorn,  as  he  had  been  under  Paganism. 
From  this  point  of  view,  the  triumph  of  Christianity  may 
justly  be  regarded  as  a  triumph  of  democracy.  “  In  the 
fourth  century  the  Council  of  Constantinople  was  composed 
of  bishops  who  were  ploughmen,  weavers,  tanners,  black¬ 
smiths,  and  the  like.”  1 

Although  pure  communism  survives  to-day  in  the  monastic 
orders  of  the  Roman  Church,  the  communism  of  laymen 
did  not  last  very  long.  Exactly  how  long  we  are  not  quite 
sure,  but  it  is  generally  assumed  that  it  did  not  survive 
apostolic  days  for  any  lengthy  period.  The  reason  does 
not  seem  far  to  seek.  Experience  proves  that  communism 
in  household  possessions  is  not  compatible  with  family  life, 
and  it  is  to  be  assumed  that  the  Early  Christians  were  not 
long  in  finding  this  out.  But  the  communal  ownership 
of  land  is  a  different  matter,  and  the  effect  of  the  Christian 

1  The  Church  and  Democracy,  pamphlet  by  Charles  Marston,  quoted  in 
Socialism  in  Church  History,  by  Conrad  Noel. 


Christianity  and  the  Guilds 


37 


teaching  was  undoubtedly  to  preserve  for  centuries  the  com¬ 
munal  system  of  land  ownership  of  the  barbarian  tribes 
who  overran  the  Empire  in  the  west,  as  it  doubtless  restored 
communal  ownership  in  places  where  it  had  disappeared. 
That  confusion  should  exist  in  regard  to  the  attitude  of 
Christianity  and  the  Mediaeval  world  towards  property  is, 
I  am  persuaded,  due  to  the  fact  that  St.  Thomas  Aquinas 
is  regarded  as  representative  of  the  Mediaeval  point  of  view. 
It  is  insufficiently  realized  that  his  teaching  about  property 
was  of  the  nature  of  a  compromise  intended  to  reconcile 
stubborn  facts  with  the  communistic  teaching  of  the  Gospel. 
In  the  thirteenth  century,  when  he  wrote,  the  Church  was 
already  defeated.  It  had  failed  in  the  attempt  to  suppress 
the  revival  of  Roman  Law,  and  the  practical  consequence 
of  the  failure  was  that  landlordism  was  beginning  to  supplant 
communal  ownership.  To  attack  the  institution  of  property 
as  such  was  difficult,  for  the  Church  itself  was  implicated. 
It  was  already  immensely  rich.  It  is  said  it  was  in  possession 
of  a  third  of  the  land.  In  such  circumstance,  Aquinas 
apparently  thought  the  only  practicable  thing  to  do  was  to 
seek  to  moralize  property.  Hence  his  endorsement  of 
Aristotle’s  dictum  “  private  property  and  common  use.” 
Possession  was  not  to  be  considered  absolute,  but  conditional 
upon  the  fulfilment  of  duties.  A  man  might  not  hold  more 
property  than  that  for  which  he  had  personal  need.  Although 
certain  forms  of  private  property  might  be  held,  it  must  be 
administered  in  accordance  with  the  necessities  of  the  holder’s 
own  position.  Superfluity  was  common,  and  the  right  and 
property  of  the  poor.  In  certain  cases  of  necessity  “  all 
things  became  common.” 

It  was  the  communistic  spirit  of  Christianity  that  gave 
rise  to  the  Guilds.  They  were  called  into  existence  by  the 
needs  of  protection  and  mutual  aid.  The  earliest  Guilds, 
as  might  be  expected,  were  religious  Guilds,  and  were  volun¬ 
tary  associations.  Their  purposes  were  what  we  would  call 
social,  as  well  as  religious  ;  their  funds  being  expended  on 
feasts,  masses  for  the  dead,  the  Church  burial  fees,  charitable 
aid,  and  the  like.  Brentano  tells  us  that  the  Guilds  had  a 
dual  origin,  and  resulted  from  the  amalgamation  of  the 
sacrificial  societies  of  the  barbarians  with  the  religious 


38  A  GuildsmarCs  Interpretation  of  History 


societies  of  Christendom  ;  he  tells  us  that  the  word  Guild 
meant  originally  a  festival  or  sacrificial  feast,  and  was  applied 
subsequently  to  the  company  who  thus  feasted  together.1 
The  Guilds  probably  had  historical  continuity  with  the 
Roman  Collegia ,  some  of  which  were  partly  craft  and  partly 
religious,  others  entirely  religious. 

With  the  dissolution  of  the  Roman  Empire  it  was  natural 
that  associations  should  be  formed  for  the  purposes  of 
defence.  Such  were  the  Frith  Guilds,  which  were  compulsory 
associations,  each  with  a  corporate  responsibility  for  the 
conduct  of  its  members.  They  provided  also  for  common 
aid  in  legal  matters,  such  as  defence  against  false  accusation. 
These  Guilds,  however,  need  not  detain  us  any  more  than 
the  great  number  of  other  Guilds  which  existed  for  particular 
purposes,  such  as  hunting  and  fishing,  for  the  repairing  of 
the  highways  and  bridges,  and  for  various  other  objects. 
We  must  pass  on  to  the  Middle  Ages,  when  the  Guilds 
definitely  became  economic  organizations,  under  the  pro¬ 
tection  of  patron  saints,  for  it  is  with  economic  Guilds  that 
we  are  specially  concerned. 

“  The  primary  purpose  of  the  craft  Guild  was  to  establish 
a  complete  system  of  industrial  control  over  all  who  were 
associated  together  in  the  pursuit  of  a  common  calling. 
It  enveloped  the  life  of  the  Mediaeval  craftsman  in  a  network 
of  restrictions  which  bound  him  hand  and  foot.  It  did 
not  suffer  the  minutest  detail  to  escape  its  rigid  scrutiny 
and  observation.  It  embodied  in  its  regulations  a  whole 
social  system,  into  which  the  individual  was  completely 
absorbed  by  the  force  of  public  opinion  and  the  pressure 
of  moral  and  social  conventions.  It  embraced  within  its 
scope  not  only  the  strictly  technical,  but  also  the  religious, 
the  artistic,  and  the  economic  activities  of  Mediaeval  society. 
It  was  first  and  foremost  undoubtedly  an  industrial  organiza¬ 
tion,  but  the  altar  and  the  pageant,  the  care  for  the  poor 
and  the  education  of  the  young,  were  no  less  part  of  its 
functions  than  the  regulation  of  wages  and  hours  and  all 
the  numerous  concerns  of  economic  life.”  2 

1  History  and  Development  of  Guilds,  by  L.  Brentano. 

2  An  Introduction  to  the  Economic  History  of  England ,  by  E.  Lipson, 
pp.  295-6. 


Christianity  and  the  Guilds 


39 


There  can  be  little  doubt  that  it  was  because  the  Guilds 
of  the  Middle  Ages  were  pervaded  by  religious  sentiment 
that  they  were  so  successful  as  economic  organizations, 
for  we  must  not  forget  that  the  sense  of  brotherhood  and 
human  solidarity  was  restored  to  the  world  by  Christianity 
after  it  had  been  broken  up  by  the  growth  of  capitalism 
under  the  Roman  Empire.  This  sense  of  the  brotherhood 
of  mankind  made  possible  the  Just  Price  which  was  the 
central  economic  idea  of  the  Middle  Ages.  It  was  an  idea 
unthinkable  in  Rome,  where  conquest  and  exploitation 
seemed  but  the  natural  order  of  the  universe.  The  Just 
Price  left  no  room  for  the  growth  of  capitalism  by  the  manipu¬ 
lation  of  exchange,  for  it  demanded  that  currency  should 
be  restricted  to  its  primary  and  proper  use  as  a  medium 
of  exchange. 

It  was  this  Mediaeval  conception  of  the  Just  Price  that, 
for  the  first  time  in  history,  made  the  regulation  of  currency 
possible,  and  it  is  only  by  relating  all  the  Guild  regulations 
to  this  central  idea  that  so  many  of  them  become  intelligible. 
The  Just  Price  is  necessarily  a  fixed  price,  and,  in  order  to 
maintain  it,  the  Guilds  had  to  be  privileged  bodies  having 
an  entire  monopoly  of  their  respective  trades  over  the  area  of 
a  particular  town  or  city  ;  for  it  was  only  by  monopoly  that 
a  fixed  price  could  be  maintained,  as  society  found  to  its 
cost  when  the  Guilds  were  no  longer  able  to  exercise  this 
function.  Only  through  the  exercise  of  authority  over  its 
individual  members  could  the  Guild  prevent  profiteering,  in 
its  forms  of  forestalling,  regrating,  engrossing,  and  adultera¬ 
tion.  Trade  abuses  of  this  kind  were  ruthlessly  suppressed 
in  the  Middle  Ages.  For  the  first  offence  a  member  was 
fined  ;  the  most  severe  penalty  was  expulsion  from  the 
Guild,  which  meant  that  a  man  lost  the  privilege  of  practising 
his  craft  in  his  native  town. 

But  a  Just  and  Fixed  Price  cannot  be  maintained  by 
moral  action  alone.  If  prices  are  to  be  fixed  throughout 
production,  it  can  be  done  only  on  the  assumption  that  a 
standard  of  quality  can  be  upheld.  As  a  standard  of  quality 
cannot  finally  be  defined  in  the  terms  of  law,  it  is  necessary, 
for  the  maintenance  of  a  standard,  to  place  authority  in 
the  hands  of  craftmasters,  a  consensus  of  whose  opinion 


40  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


constitutes  the  final  court  of  appeal.  In  order  to  ensure  a 
supply  of  masters  it  is  necessary  to  train  apprentices,  to 
regulate  the  size  of  the  workshop,  the  hours  of  labour,  the 
volume  of  production,  and  the  like  ;  for  only  when  attention 
is  given  to  such  matters  are  workshop  conditions  created 
which  are  favourable  to  the  production  of  masters.  It  is 
thus  that  we  see  all  the  regulations — as,  indeed,  the  whole 
hierarchy  of  the  Guild — arising  out  of  the  primary  necessity 
of  maintaining  the  Just  Price.1 

The  elaborate  organizations  of  the  Guilds  did  not  spring 
full-grown,  but  were  evolved  gradually,  as  a  result  of  experi¬ 
ence  in  the  light  of  the  central  idea  of  the  Just  Price.  Support 
is  given  to  the  thesis  that,  as  economic  organizations,  the 
Guilds  grew  up  around  the  idea  of  the  Just  Price,  by  the 
fact  that  when  Guilds  first  made  their  appearance  they 
were  not  differentiated  into  separate  trades.  The  first 
Guilds  which  assumed  economic  functions  were  the  Guilds 
Merchant,2  which  the  various  charters  acknowledged  as  the 
ruling  power  within  cities,  and  upon  which  they  confer  not 
only  the  right  of  regulating  trade,  but  the  right  of  municipal 
self-government.  Being  mixed  organizations,  they  would 
naturally  be  concerned  primarily  with  the  maintenance  of 
a  standard  of  morality  in  commercial  transactions.  In 
the  eleventh  century,  when  the  first  of  these  charters  in 
this  country  was  granted  by  the  sovereign,  the  towns  were 
small,  the  largest  not  containing  more  than  seven  or  eight 
thousand  inhabitants.  Agriculture  was  still  one  of  the 
main  occupations  of  the  burgesses,  and  its  produce  one  of 
the  principal  elements  of  their  trade.  It  was,  perhaps,  the 
smallness  of  the  towns  that  accounts  for  the  fact  that  at 
that  date  craftsmen  did  not  organize  themselves  separately 
but  became  members  of  the  Guilds  Merchant,  or,  in  other 
words,  of  the  municipality,  for  in  those  days  the  two 

1  Apprenticeship  became  an  integral  element  in  the  constitution  of  the 
Craft  Guild  because  in  no  other  way  was  it  possible  to  ensure  the  permanency 
of  practice  and  the  continuity  of  tradition  whereby  alone  the  regulation  of  the 
Guild  for  honourable  dealing  and  sound  workmanship  could  be  carried  on  from 
generation  to  generation  ;  or  to  raise  up,  as  one  Guild  expresses  it,  “  honest 
and  virtuous  masters  to  succeed  us  in  the  worshipful  fellowship  for  the  main¬ 
tenance  of  the  feats  of  merchandise  ”  (Lipson,  pp.  282-3). 

2  The  earliest  known  reference  to  the  Guilds  Merchant  is  in  a  charter  to  the 
town  of  Burford,  1087-1107  (ibid.,  p.  240). 


Christianity  and  the  Guilds 


41 


were  identical.  All  concerned  in  industry,  in  whatsoever 
capacity,  joined  the  same  organization.  A  comparatively 
small  town  would  contain  merchants  enough — each  of 
them  trading  in  several  commodities — to  form  a  Guild 
Merchant,  and  at  that  time  anybody  who  bought  and  sold 
anything  beyond  provisions  for  daily  use  ranked  as  a  merchant. 
The  population,  indeed,  would  need  to  be  much  greater 
before  separate  trades  could  support  organizations  of  their 
own.  This  point  of  development  was  reached  about  a 
hundred  years  later,  when  the  Craft  Guilds,  after  making 
their  separate  appearance,  finally  substituted  their  collective 
power  for  that  of  the  Guilds  Merchant,  which  survived  as 
the  municipality  controlling  the  separate  Craft  Guilds. 

The  immediate  grievance  that  precipitated  the  struggle 
which  ended  in  the  establishment  of  the  Craft  Guilds  was 
the  fact  that  membership  of  the  Guilds  Merchant  was  confined 
to  such  as  owned  land  in  the  towns.  At  first  there  was  no 
objection  to  this,  because  in  those  early  days  every  burgess 
held  land.  Gradually,  however,  a  class  of  craftsmen  appeared 
that  did  not  own  land,  and  as  these  were  excluded,  from 
the  Guilds  Merchant,  they  rebelled.  No  doubt  the  craftsmen 
who  were  members  of  the  Guilds  Merchant  had  their  own 
grievances,  for  in  a  mixed  organization  it  invariably  happens 
that  those  things  which  concern  the  majority  or  dominant 
party  receive  attention,  while  the  interests  of  the  minority 
are  neglected.  As,  a  century  after  the  formation  of  the 
Guilds  Merchant,  the  craftsmen  everywhere  were  in  revolt, 
it  is  a  fair  assumption  that  it  was  because  they  found  their 
particular  interests  neglected.  Anyway,  it  is  interesting 
to  observe  that  the  craftsmen  who  were  the  first  to  rebel 
— the  weavers  and  fullers — were  those  who  did  not  produce 
exclusively  for  a  local  market,  and  who  would  consequently 
be  the  first  to  feel  the  tyranny  of  the  middleman.  When 
all  circumstances  are  taken  into  account,  this  explanation 
of  the  rebellion  of  the  craftsmen  seems  to  me  to  be  the  only 
probable  one.  The  explanation  generally  given  by  economic 
historians,  that  the  quarrel  between  the  weavers  and  the 
Guilds  Merchant  was  due  to  the  fact  that  as  the  Flemings 
had  originally  introduced  the  weaving  industry  into  England 
a  certain  proportion  of  the  men  engaged  in  that  craft  would 


42  A  Guildsman  s  Interpretation  of  History 

be  of  alien  ancestry,  and  the  Guild  merchants  would  in 
consequence  be  inclined  to  act  unfavourably  towards  them, 
has  been  disposed  of  by  Mr.  Lipson,1  who  contends  that  it 
was  not  that  the  Guilds  Merchant  desired  to  exclude  the 
weavers,  but  that  the  weavers  declined  to  be  brought  within 
the  jurisdiction  of  the  Guilds  Merchant.  It  seems  to  me, 
however,  that  he  errs  when  he  offers  as  an  explanation  of 
their  refusal  the  purely  selfish  one  that,  having  secured 
special  royal  charters  for  themselves,  the  weavers  strove 
to  evade  the  control  of  the  Guilds  Merchant  in  order  to 
avoid  the  payment  of  taxes,  because  it  is  reasonable  to  assume 
that  special  royal  charters  would  not  have  been  granted 
unless  the  weavers  could  show  due  cause  why  they  should 
be  accorded  exceptional  treatment,  which  suggests  the 
existence  of  a  real  grievance  against  the  Guilds  Merchant. 
If  the  motive  had  been  such  as  Mr.  Lipson  suggests,  it  is 
certain  that  all  other  crafts  would  have  supported  the 
endeavour  of  the  Guilds  Merchant  to  bring  the  weavers 
into  line.  The  fact  that  the  submission  of  weavers  in  the 
year  1300  was  speedily  followed  by  the  formation  of  separate 
Guilds  for  other  crafts  clearly  demonstrates  that  there 
was  some  general  economic  cause  at  work,  and  this,  I  submit, 
was  the  grievance  under  which  the  producer  has  at  all  times 
laboured — the  tendency  to  fall  under  the  domination  of 
the  middleman.  On  the  Continent  these  struggles  between 
the  Guilds  Merchant  and  the  craftsmen  developed  into 
fierce  civil  wars,  but  in  England  the  struggle  was  not  so 
violent.  In  both  cases,  however,  the  end  was  the  same. 
Political  equality  was  secured,  and  political  power  in  the 
municipality  passed  out  of  the  hands  of  the  merchants  into 
those  of  the  craftsmen,  who  organized  separate  Craft  Guilds 
for  each  trade,  these  Guilds  henceforth  buying  the  raw 
materials  for  their  members  and,  in  certain  cases,  marketing 
their  goods.  The  services  of  the  merchants  were  now  dis¬ 
pensed  with.  What  became  of  the  merchants  we  hardly 
know,  but  probably  the  Merchant  Adventurers  about  whom 
we  read  later  are  a  revival  of  them.  The  whole  subject, 
however,  is  obscure. 

Within  a  century  of  the  general  establishment  of  Craft 

1  Lipson,  pp.  323-7. 


Christianity  and  the  Guilds 


43 


Guilds  we  find  that  monopolies  began  to  appear  among 
them,  and  are  followed  by  struggles  between  the  journeymen 
and  the  masters.  Hitherto  it  had  been  possible  for  every 
craftsman  who  had  attained  to  "  sufficient  cunning  and 
understanding  in  the  exercise  of  his  craft  ”  to  look  forward 
to  a  day  when  he  would  be  able  to  set  up  in  business  on  his 
own  account,  and  to  qualify  as  a  master  of  his  Guild,  and 
in  this  connection  it  must  be  understood  that  the  Mediaeval 
Guild  was  not  an  organization  which  sought  to  supplant 
the  private  individual  producer  by  a  system  of  co-operative 
production.  The  Guild  did  not  seek  to  organize  self-governing 
workshops,  but  to  regulate  industry  in  such  a  way  as  to 
ensure  equality  of  opportunity  for  all  who  entered  it.  About 
the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  century,  however,  a  time  came 
when  this  ideal  could  be  upheld  only  with  increasing  difficulty, 
for  a  class  of  skilled  craftsmen  came  into  existence  who  had 
no  other  prospect  beyond  remaining  as  journeymen  all  their 
lives.  When  once  the  permanent  nature  of  these  decayed 
circumstances  had  become  recognized,  the  journeymen  began 
to  organize  themselves  into  societies  which  are  called  by 
Brentano  “  Journeymen  Fraternities,”  and  in  Mr.  Lipson’s 
recent  work  “  Yeomen’s  Guilds  ”  which,  while  accepting  an 
inferior  status  as  unalterable,  sought  to  improve  the 
position  of  their  members  as  wage-earners.  There  were 
strikes  for  higher  wages,  sometimes  with  success.  These 
fraternities,  in  other  cases,  acted  merely  as  defensive  organiza¬ 
tions,  to  combat  a  tendency  towards  a  lowering  of  the  standard 
of  living  which  seems  to  have  made  its  appearance  about 
that  time,  and  which  was  due  to  the  same  group  of  econo¬ 
mic  causes  which  precipitated  the  Peasants’  Revolt.  The 
Peasants’  Revolt  will  be  dealt  with  in  a  later  chapter. 

It  is  interesting  to  observe  that  in  the  formation  and 
organization  of  the  journeymen  societies  the  Friars  played 
an  important  part,  as  they  did  in  the  organization  of  the 
Peasant’s  Revolt,  a  circumstance  which  probably  accounts  for 
the  fact  that  these  fraternities  were  in  the  first  place  formed 
as  religious  ones.  The  Master  Saddlers  of  London  complained 
that  “  under  a  feigned  colour  of  sanctity  the  journey¬ 
men  formed  ‘covins’  to  raise  wages  greatly  in  excess.”1 

1  Lipson,  p.  357. 


44  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


From  the  outset  the  London  Guilds  adopted  a  policy  of 
repression  towards  them,  but  in  other  towns — as  at  Northamp¬ 
ton  and  at  Oxford — a  spirit  of  compromise  prevailed.  At 
Chester  the  bitterness  became  so  intense  that  the  quarrel 
was  fought  in  quite  a  Continental  style,  the  Master  Weavers 
attacking  the  journeymen  with  pole-axes,  baslards,  and 
iron-pointed  poles.  Generally  speaking,  no  solution  of 
the  difficulty  was  arrived  at.  The  journeymen  waged  a 
kind  of  guerilla  warfare  against  the  masters,  much  as  trade 
unions  do  against  capitalists  to-day.  In  1548  an  Act  of 
Parliament  forbade  the  formation  of  unions  for  improving 
conditions  of  labour,  but  this  was  when  the  Guilds  had  for 
all  practical  purposes  ceased  to  exist  as  organizations  regu¬ 
lating  the  conditions  of  production. 

Critics  of  the  Guilds  are  accustomed  to  point  to  these 
struggles  as  testifying  to  the  prevalence  of  a  tyrannical 
spirit  within  the  Guilds,  but  such,  however,  is  to  misjudge 
the  situation.  It  becomes  abundantly  clear  from  a  wider 
survey  of  the  economic  conditions  of  the  later  Middle  Ages 
— as  we  shall  discover  when  we  consider  the  defeat  of  the 
Guilds  in  a  later  chapter — that,  whatever  evils  the  Guilds  may 
have  developed,  the  changes  which  overtook  them  came  about 
as  the  result  of  external  influences  operating  upon  them 
from  without,  rather  than  through  defects  which  were 
inherent  in  their  structure  from  the  beginning.  It  cannot 
be  said  of  them  that  they  carried  within  themselves  the 
seeds  of  their  own  destruction,  as  will  readily  be  understood 
when  it  is  remembered  that,  as  Mr.  Lipson  has  said,  “  their 
underlying  principle  was  order  rather  than  progress,  stability 
rather  than  expansion  ”  ;  or,  as  I  would  prefer  to  put  it, 
order  rather  than  expansion,  stability  rather  than  mobility. 
While  it  is  clear  that  in  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries 
the  masters  endeavoured,  by  making  their  admission  fees  pro¬ 
hibitive,  to  exclude  others  from  their  ranks,  it  is  manifest  that 
this  policy  was  dictated  by  the  instinct  of  self-preservation, 
when  they  were  beginning  to  feel  the  pressure  of  the  com¬ 
petition  of  capitalist  manufacture.  This  spirit  of  exclusive¬ 
ness  did  not  actuate  the  Guilds  in  their  early  days.  The 
problem  then  was  not  how  to  keep  people  out  of  the  Guilds, 
but  how  to  get  them  in.  The  Guilds  Merchant  were  willing 


Christianity  and  the  Guilds  45 

- - — -  / 

at  the  start  to  extend  privileges  to  all  who  agreed 

to  abide  by  the  Just  Price.  When  the  Guilds  changed,  it 
was  because  they  had  failed  in  their  original  aim  of  making 
the  Just  Price  co-extensive  with  industry,  and  were  suffering ' 
from  the  consequence  of  tneir  failure.  Looked  at  from  this 
point  of  view,  the  internal  quarrels  of  the  Guilds  appear  as 
the  dissentions  not  of  victorious  but  of  defeated  men,  not 
of  the  spirit  which  created  the  Guilds,  but  of  the  spirit  that 
destroyed  them. 

Even  if  this  interpretation  be  not  accepted,  it  would  be 
irrational  to  condemn  the  Guilds  because  they  laboured 
under  internal  dissensions,  for  on  such  grounds  every  human 
organization  which  existed  in  the  past  or  exists  to-day 
stands  condemned  within  certain  limits,  such  dissensions 
being  in  the  nature  of  things.  The  experience  of  history 
teaches  us  that  all  organizations  need  readjustment  from 
time  to  time  :  the  growth  of  population  alone  is  sufficient 
to  cause  this.  Moreover,  every  social  organization  tends  to 
develop  little  oligarchies  within  itself.  Mr.  Chesterton 
has  well  said  that  “  there  happen  to  be  some  sins  that  go 
with  power  and  prosperity,  while  it  is  certain  that  whoever 
holds  power  will  have  some  motive  for  abusing  it.”  From 
this  point  of  view,  the  test  of  righteousness  in  social  con¬ 
stitutions  is  not  that  they  do  not  develop  oligarchies  and 
tyrannies,  for  all  institutions  tend  to  do  this.  Rather  let 
us  ask  what  resistance  may  be  organized  against  any  such 
encroachments  on  popular  liberty,  and  it  is  the  eternal 
glory  of  the  Guild  system  that  such  rebellion  was  always 
possible.  The  motto  of  the  old  Liberals,  that  “  the  price 
of  liberty  is  eternal  vigilance,”  is,  says  Mr.  de  Maeztu,  no 
more  than  the  organization  of  this  jealousy  of  the  Guilds.”1 
I  would  respectfully  recommend  this  idea  to  the  considera¬ 
tion  of  the  Fabian  and  the  Marxian  alike,  for  it  is  the  failure 
to  perceive  this  central  truth  of  the  Guilds  that  leads  the 
one  to  place  faith  in  a  soul-destroying  bureaucracy,  and  the 
other  in  class  war.  These  ideas  are  but  different  aspects 
of  the  same  error — a  complete  inability  to  understand  what 
is  the  norm  in  social  relationships.  Shrinking  from  the 
very  thought  of  rebellion,  the  Fabian  seeks  the  creation 
1  Authority,  Liberty,  and  Function,  by  Ramiro  dc  Maeztu,  p.  198. 


46  A  Guildsmarts  Interpretation  of  History 


of  a  Leviathan  against  which  rebellion  would  be  in  vain  ; 
while,  with  an  outlook  equally  perverted,  the  Marxian 
imagines  that  the  social  struggle  which  is  inherent  in  any 
healthy  society,  and  is  necessary  to  effect  periodic  readjust¬ 
ments,  can,  by  a  grand  supreme  effort  be  abolished  once  and 
for  ever. 


V 


CHAPTER  III 


THE  MEDIAEVAL  HIERARCHY 

“  Heavy  laborious  work/’  says  Heinrich  von  Langenstein, 
the  Mediaeval  economist,  “  is  the  inevitable  yoke  of  punish¬ 
ment  which  according  to  God’s  righteous  verdict  has  been 
laid  on  all  the  sons  of  Adam.  But  many  of  Adam’s  descend¬ 
ants  seek  in  all  sorts  of  cunning  ways  to  escape  from  this 
yoke  and  live  in  idleness  without  labour,  and  at  the  same 
time  to  have  a  superfluity  of  useful  and  necessary  things  ; 
some  by  robbery  and  plunder,  some  by  usurious  dealings, 
others  by  lying,  deceit,  and  the  countless  forms  of  dishonest 
and  fraudulent  gain  by  which  men  are  for  ever  seeking  to 
get  riches  and  abundance  without  toil.”  1 

It  is  because  in  every  society  a  minority  of  men  have 
always  been,  and  probably  always  will  be,  actuated  by  such 
anti-social  motives  that  government  all  at  times  is  necessary. 
They  bring  to  naught  the  dreams  of  the  philosophic  anarchist 
and  other  kinds  of  social  idealists  the  moment  any  attempt 
is  made  to  give  practical  effect  to  their  theories.  As  it 
was  understood  in  the  Middle  Ages,  the  function  of  govern¬ 
ment  was  to  give  protection  to  the  community  by  keeping 
this  type  of  man — the  man  of  prey — in  a  strict  subjection. 
By  insisting  upon  the  maintenance  of  a  Just  and  Fixed 
Price,  the  Guilds  were  able  to  keep  him  under  in  the  towns 
where  their  jurisdiction  obtained.  It  is  for  this  reason 
that  the  Guilds  are  to  be  regarded  as  the  normal  form  of 
social  organization  in  the  Middle  Ages,  for  as  the  Mediaeval 
idea  was  that  man  should  live  by  the  sweat  of  his  brow, 
no  other  form  of  organization  would  have  been  necessary, 
had  all  men  been  actuated  by  the  best  intentions.  Outside 

1  History  of  the  German  People  at  the  Close  of  the  Middle  Ages,  by  Johannes 
Janssen,  vol.  ii.  p.  94. 


47 


48  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


the  towns,  however,  such  economic  control  had  not  been 
established,  because  a  precedent  condition  of  such  control 
was  never  attained.  In  rural  areas  the  man  of  prey  had 
never  been  brought  entirely  under  military  and  civil  control, 
and  it  was  the  attempt  to  subjugate  him  that  brought  into 
existence  the  Feudal  System.  The  primary  necessity  of 
self-defence  was  its  raison  d'etre. 

Such  appears  to  be  the  probable  explanation  of  the  pheno¬ 
menon  of  Feudalism,  for  exactly  how  it  came  into  existence 
is  largely  a  matter  of  conjecture.  After  the  break-up  of 
the  Roman  Empire,  when  Europe  was  overrun  by  barbarian 
tribes  and  orderly  government  had  broken  down,  the  man 
of  prey  found  himself  at  large.  Robber  knights  (or  brigands, 
as  they  would  be  termed  in  those  days)  made  their  appear¬ 
ance  everywhere  in  Western  Europe,  and  preyed  upon  the 
industrious  part  of  the  population.  Divided  into  groups  or 
clans,  these  people  would  find  it  expedient  to  be  permanently 
organized  for  the  purposes  of  self-defence,  ready  always  to 
repel  the  raider  whenever  he  chanced  to  make  his  appearance. 
It  would  be  necessary  in  such  communities  to  carry  on  the 
dual  vocations  of  agriculture  and  defence.  The  clan  would 
be  divided  into  two  sections,  the  more  adventurous  spirits 
taking  upon  themselves  the  responsibility  of  military  defence, 
while  the  rest  would  agree  to  feed  them  :  out  of  such  an 
arrangement  it  can  be  seen  that  the  Feudal  manor  might 
gradually  arise.  The  fighting-men  would  tend  to  become 
a  class  apart,  and  would  claim  rights  and  privileges  over 
the  non-combatant  section  of  the  community.  The  chieftain 
of  the  fighting-men  would  become  the  lord,  and  the  fighting- 
men  would  be  his  retainers.  This  system  would  be  imposed 
upon  other  clans  by  means  of  conquest.  The  successful 
chief  would  divide  the  conquered  territory  among  his  followers, 
and  compel  the  conquered  peoples  to  become  their  serfs. 
In  other  cases,  the  Feudal  relationship  would  be  established 
because  some  group  of  people  sought  the  protection  of  a 
superior  lord. 

Looking  at  Feudalism  from  this  point  of  view,  it  may 
be  said  that  while  its  existence  was  due  to  the  depredations 
of  the  robber  knights,  and  though  these  knights  would  have 
certain  groups  of  workers  at  their  mercy,  there  would  be 


The  Mediaeval  Hierarchy 


49 


other  knights,  or  lords,  who  came  into  being  as  protectors  of 
the  communal  rights  of  the  people.  Such  were  the  chivalrous 
knights  of  romance  and  legend.  By  reason  of  the  different 
circumstances  which  had  created  the  various  Feudal  groups 
— in  fact,  according  to  whether  they  owed  their  existence  to 
depredation  or  defence — a  different  social  life  would  obtain 
within  the  group.  The  serfs  would  enjoy  varying  degrees  of 
liberty.  The  serfs  of  the  robber  knights  would  be  tyrannized 
over,  because  the  robber  knights  would  never  feel  their 
position  to  be  secure  ;  but  the  serfs  of  the  chivalrous  knights 
would  enjoy  all  the  advantages  of  a  communal  life,  for  the 
chivalrous  knights,  owing  their  position  to  popular  election, 
would  have  no  desire  to  tyrannize.  After  the  lapse  of 
centuries  and  the  changes  inevitable  in  an  hereditary  in¬ 
stitution,  the  original  character  of  the  groups,  influenced 
by  the  changing  personalities  of  the  lords,  would  tend  to 
become  modified. 

Anyway,  although  William  the  Conqueror  is  popularly 
supposed  to  have  introduced  the  Feudal  System  into  England, 
it  is  nowadays  admitted  that  it  existed  here  long  before  the 
Norman  Conquest,  that  much  of  it  was  not  developed  until 
after  the  Norman  period,  and  that  at  no  time  was  Feudalism 
a  uniform  and  logical  system,  outside  of  historical  and  legal 
textbooks.  Feudal  land  was  held  in  various  ways  and  on 
various  terms  by  the  villains,  the  cottiers,  and  the  serfs. 
According  to  Domesday  Book,  the  last  mentioned  did  not 
exceed  more  than  16  per  cent,  of  the  whole  population. 
In  addition  to  these,  however,  there  were  the  free  tenants, 
who  did  no  regular  work  for  the  manor,  but  whose  services 
were  requisitioned  at  certain  periods — such  as  harvest-time 
— when  labour  was  required. 

The  principle  governing  the  Feudal  System  was  that 
of  reciprocal  rights  and  duties,  for  lord  and  serf  alike  were 
tied  to  the  soil.  Although  the  serf  had  to  give  half  of  his 
labour  to  his  lord,  it  was  not  exploitation,  as  we  understand 
the  term  ;  for  in  return  for  his  labour,  which  went  to  support 
the  lord  and  his  retainers,  military  protection  was  given 
to  the  serf.  The  amount  of  labour  which  a  lord  could  exact 
was  a  definite  and  fixed  quantity,  and  was  not  determined 
merely  by  the  greed  of  the  lord.  The  class  division  was 

4 


50  A  Guildsmari’s  Interpretation  of  History 


primarily  a  difference  of  function  rather  than  a  difference 
of  wealth.  The  baron  did  not  own  the  land,  but  held  it 
from  the  king  on  definite  terms,  such  as  furnishing  him  with 
men  in  times  of  war,  and  of  administering  justice  within 
his  domains.  But  in  this  country  the  baron  rarely  possessed 
that  criminal  jurisdiction  in  matters  of  life  and  death  which 
was  common  in  continental  feudalism.  He  assisted  at  the 
King’s  Council  Board,  when  requested.  To  suit  their  own 
convenience,  the  barons  divided  up  these  territories  among 
their  retainers,  on  terms  corresponding  to  those  on  which 
they  held  their  own.  It  was  thus  that  the  whole  organiza¬ 
tion  outside  of  the  towns  was  graduated  from  the  king, 
through  the  greater  barons,  to  tenants  who  held  their  posses¬ 
sions  from  a  superior  lord  to  whom  they  owed  allegiance. 

Such  was  the  principle  of  the  Feudal  System.  Although 
the  System  was  in  no  way  uniform  in  the  majority  of  cases, 
it  probably  worked  fairly  well,  for  the  relation  between  the 
lords  and  the  serfs  was  an  essentially  human  one.  Based 
upon  recognized  services  and  rights,  it  was  not  a  barrier 
to  good  understanding  and  fellowship.  In  countries  where 
semi-feudal  relationships  still  exist — as  on  many  of  the 
large  estates  in  these  countries — in  Cuba  and  Mexico,  there 
is  no  feeling  of  personal  inferiority  between  master  and  man. 
A  traveller  from  these  parts  tells  me  that  in  Cuba  it  is  the 
custom  for  owners  of  big  plantations  to  breakfast  with 
their  men.  The  owner  sits  at  the  head  of  the  table  with 
his  overseers,  friends,  and  guests,  and  below  the  “salt”  sit 
the  workmen,  according  to  rank  and  seniority,  down  to 
the  newest  black  boy.  Meeting  on  the  plantation,  the 
owner  exchanges  cigarettes  with  his  men,  and  they  discuss 
with  animation  politics,  cock-fighting,  or  the  prospects  of 
the  crop.  Feudal  England,  I  imagine,  was  something 
like  this,  and  not  the  horrible  nightmare  conjured  up  by 
lying  historians,  interested  in  painting  the  past  as  black 
as  possible,  in  order  to  make  modern  conditions  appear 
tolerable  by  comparison.  Where  there  was  a  good  lord  life 
would  be  pleasant,  for  the  serf  lived  in  rude  plenty.  The 
defect  of  the  system  would  be  the  defect  of  all  aristocracies 
— that  where  there  was  a  bad  lord  redress  would  be  difficult 
to  obtain.  For  though  a  lord  might,  in  theory,  be  deprived 


The  Mediceval  Hierarchy 


51 


of  his  fief  for  abuse  of  power,  the  abuse  would  have  to  be 
very  gross  before  such  a  thing  could  happen.  We  are  safe, 
I  think,  in  concluding  that  where  the  lord  was  inclined 
to  be  arbitrary  it  would  be  difficult  to  restrain  him,  though, 
of  course,  as  the  people  would  in  those  days  have  the  Church 
on  their  side,  their  action  would  tend  to  modify  the  original 
proposition. 

The  Feudal  System  was  essentially  a  form'  of  organization 
adapted  to  a  stage  of  transition  with  no  finality  about  it. 
As  the  relationships  existing  between  the  lords  and  the 
serfs  were  dictated  primarily  by  military  necessity  and 
based  upon  payment  in  kind,  they  were  bound  to  have 
been  disintegrated  by  the  growth  of  orderly  government 
on  the  one  hand  and  the  spread  of  the  currency  on  the  other. 
There  was,  nevertheless,  nothing  in  the  nature  of  things 
why  when  Feudal  society  did  disintegrate  it  should  have 
been  transformed  into  landlordism  and  capitalism,  for  as 
the  old  Feudal  order  was  dissolved  by  the  spread  of  currency 
the  agricultural  population  might  just  as  conceivably  have 
been  organized  into  Guilds.  Moreover,  I  believe  they  would 
have  been,  but  for  a  change  in  the  legal  system  which  entirely 
undermined  the  old  communal  relationships  of  the  Feudal 
groups  ;  or,  to  be  precise,  if  the  Communal  Law  which  had 
hitherto  sustained  Mediaeval  society  had  not  been  displaced 
by  the  revival  of  Roman  Law.  This  issue  we  shall  have 
to  consider  in  the  next  chapter. 

Whatever  misgivings  Medievalists  may  have  had  respect¬ 
ing  the  institution  of  Feudalism,  they  had  none  respecting 
the  institution  of  Monarchy.  Feudalism  they  might  regard 
as  a  thing  of  transition  which  was  bound  to  pass  away,  but 
the  institution  of  Monarchy  they  contemplated  on  quite  a 
different  plane.  It  was  a  part  of  the  natural  order  of  things, 
and  almost  with  one  voice  Mediaeval  publicists  declared 
monarchy  to  be  the  best  form  of  government.  St.  Thomas 
Aquinas  defends  the  institution  of  monarchy  entirely  on 
the  grounds  of  practical  expediency.  One  man  must  be 
set  apart  to  rule,  because  “  where  there  are  many  men 
and  each  one  provides  whatever  he  likes  for  himself,  the 
energies  of  the  multitude  are  dissipated  unless  there  is, 
also,  some  who  has  the  care  of  that  which  is  for  the  benefit 


52  A  Guildsman’s  Interpretation  of  History 


of  the  multitude.”  1  “A  power  that  is  united  is  more 
efficacious  in  producing  its  effect  than  a  dispersed  or  divided 
power.”  2  “  The  rule  of  the  many  nearly  always  ended  in 

tyranny,  as  clearly  appears  in  the  Roman  Republic,  which, 
while  for  some  time  the  magistracy  was  exercised  by  many 
enmities,  dissensions,  and  civil  wars,  fell  into  the  hands 
of  the  most  cruel  tyrants. ”3 

There  is  here  no  suggestion  of  the  Divine  Right  of  Kings. 
That  was  a  post-Reformation  idea  and  the  invention  of 
James  I.  The  doctrine  of  the  unconditional  duty  of  obedience 
to  monarchs  was  wholly  foreign  to  the  Mediaeval  mind. 
Monarchs  were  instituted  for  the  sake  of  the  people,  not  the 
people  for  the  sake  of  the  monarchs.  “As  a  rule,  each 
prince  on  his  accession  was  obliged  to  swear  fidelity  to  all 
written  and  traditional  customs,  and  it  was  only  after  he 
had  conferred  a  charter  of  rights  that  fealty  was  pledged 
to  him.  Thus,  Duke  Albert  IV  of  Bavaria  directed  that 
every  prince’s  son  or  heir  should,  on  receiving  the  vow  of 
fealty,  secure  to  the  State  deputies  of  the  prelates,  nobles, 
and  cities,  their  freedom,  ancient  customs,  and  respected 
rights  ;  and  pledge  himself  not  to  interfere  with  them  in 
any  way.  The  formal  clause,  '  The  land  and  each  inhabitant 
of  it  shall  be  undisturbed  in  his  rights  and  customs/  was 
a  sure  guarantee  against  the  arbitrary  legislature  of  the 
princes  without  counsel,  knowledge,  or  will  of  the  Estate- 
General.”  4 

According,  then,  to  the  Mediaeval  view,  the  king  was  not 
so  much  the  ruler  as  the  first  guardian  of  the  State  ;  not 
so  much  the  owner  of  the  realm  as  the  principal  administrator 
of  its  powers  and  interests.  His  power  was  not  absolute, 
but  limited  within  certain  bounds.  The  principle  involved 
is  the  one  which  runs  through  all  Mediaeval  polity  of  reciprocal 
rights  and  duties.  All  public  authority  was  looked  upon  as 
a  responsibility  conferred  by  a  higher  power,  but  the  duty 
of  obedience  was  conditioned  by  the  rightfulness  of  the 
command.  “  The  Mediaeval  doctrine  taught  that  every 
command  which  exceeded  the  limits  of  the  ruler’s  authority 

1  New  Things  and  Old  in  St.  Thomas  Aqimias,  edited  by  H.  C.  O’Neill, 
pp.  222-3.  2  Ibid.,  pp.  226.  3  Ibid.,  pp.  227. 

4  Janssen,  vol.  ii.  pp.  13 1-2. 


The  Mediaeval  Hierarchy 


53 


was  a  mere  nullity,  and  obliged  none  to  obedience.  And 
then,  again,  it  proclaimed  the  right  of  resistance,  and  even 
armed .  resistance,  against  the  compulsory  enforcement  of 
any  unrighteous  and  tyrannical  measure,  such  enforcement 
being  regarded  as  an  act  of  violence.  Nay,  more,  it  taught 
(though  some  men  with  an  enlightened  sense  of  law  might 
always  deny  this)  that  tyrannicide  was  justified,  or,  at  least, 
excusable/’ 1  Manegold  of  Lautenbach  teaches  that  the 
king  who  has  become  a  tyrant  should  be  expelled  like  an 
unfaithful  shepherd.  Similar  revolutionary  doctrines  are 
frequently  maintained  by  the  Papal  party  against  the  wielders 
of  State  power.  John  of  Salisbury  emphatically  recommends 
the  slaughter  of  a  tyrant,  for  a  tyranny  is  nothing  less  than 
an  abuse  of  power  granted  by  God  to  man.  He  vouches 
Biblical  and  classical  examples,  and  rejects  the  use  of  poison, 
breach  of  trust,  breach  of  oath.2  St.  Thomas  Aquinas  is 
against  tyrannicide,  but  is  in  favour  of  active  resistance 
against  tyrants,  though  he  recommends  that  “  if  the  tyranny 
is  not  excessive  it  is  better  to  bear  it  for  a  time  than,  by  acting 
against  the  tyrant,  to  be  involved  in  many  perils  that  are 
worse  than  tyranny.”  3 

The  paradox  of  the  position  was  that  it  was  precisely 
in  the  Middle  Ages,  when  there  was  nothing  sacrosanct 
about  the  institution  of  monarchy,  that  kings  were  popular 
and  their  lives  were  very  much  safer  than  they  are  to-day. 
They  were  supposed  to  act  impartially,  to  protect  the  people 
against  oppression  by  the  nobles,  and  to  be  the  impersonation 
of  justice,  mercy,  generosity,  and  greatness  ;  and  it  is  to 
be  presumed  that  it  was  because  they  did  to  some  extent 
fulfil  such  expectations  that  monarchy  was  popular.  It 
was  an  ancient  and  generally  entertained  opinion  that  the 
will  of  the  people  was  the  source  of  all  temporal  power  ; 
but,  while  kings  owed  their  authority  immediately  to  the 
goodwill  of  the  people,  it  was  felt  that,  ultimately,  it  was 
derived  from  God.  Which  belief  is  an  entirely  rational 
one,  for,  considering  that  all  legitimate  monarchies  are 
hereditary,  if  God  does  not  choose  the  actual  successor  to 

1  Political  Theories  of  the  Middle  Ages,  by  Dr.  Otto  Gierke,  p.  35. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  143. 

3  New  Things  and  Old  in  St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  pp.  227-S. 


54  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


the  throne,  then  no  one  does.  To  accept  God  as  the  ultimate 
source  of  authority  was  to  the  Mediaeval  mind  a  much  more 
satisfactory  explanation  than  the  legal  fictions  with  which 
moderns  seek  to  escape  from  the  dilemma. 

All  earthly  lordship  is,  however,  limited  by  its  nature. 
It  is  limited  by  human  and  geographical  considerations. 
Hence,  in  this  world  there  are  many  temporal  powers.  But 
the  universe  is  one.  If  human  intercourse  is  to  be  possible,  if 
temporal  powers  are  to  prevail,  there  must  be  certain  common 
standards  of  morals,  of  thought  and  of  culture.  If  these  are 
to  be  upheld  in  the  world,  they  must  rest  on  certain  fixed 
and  unalterable  dogmas.  There  must  be  the  recognition 
of  an  ultimate  good,  a  true  and  a  beautiful.  But  men,  owing 
to  their  limitations,  are  incapable  of  determining  the  nature 
of  these.  Left  to  themselves,  they  tend  to  emphasize  their 
points  of  difference  and  to  lose  what  they  have  in  common. 
They  will  worship  material  things,  and,  like  the  builders 
of  Babel,  end  in  a  confusion  of  tongues,  no  man  knowing 
what  to  or  what  not  to  believe.  Hence  the  need  of  Divine 
interposition  to  reveal  to  the  world  the  nature  of  the  truth 
by  which  alone  mankind  can  live,  and  to  secure  its  recognition 
among  men.  Hence,  also,  the  Christian  Church,  which 
exists  to  uphold  in  the  world  the  revealed  truth  which  other¬ 
wise  would  be  forgotten,  and  to  transmit  the  truth,  pure 
and  undefiled,  from  generation  to  generation.  And  hence, 
again,  the  priority  of  the  Spiritual  over  the  Temporal  Power, 
of  the  Church  over  the  State.  For  the  State,  being  of  its 
nature  earthly,  maintains  itself  by  considerations  of  expe¬ 
diency,  and,  apart  from  the  daily  reminder  of  permanent 
truth  which  the  existence  of  a  spiritual  power  gives,  would 
place  its  reliance  entirely  in  the  sufficiency  of  material  things. 

Such  was  the  Mediseval  conception  of  the  social  order. 
It  rested  upon  the  constitutive  principle  of  unity  underlying 
and  comprehending  the  world’s  plurality.  The  Medievalists 
reconciled  the  philosophical  contradiction  implied  in  the 
simultaneous  existence  of  the  one  and  the  many  by  accepting 
in  the  visible  world  a  plurality  of  temporal  powers,  supported 
and  sustained  by  the  indivisible  unity  of  the  spiritual  power. 
Along  with  this  idea,  however,  came  the  necessity  of  the 
division  of  the  community  between  two  organized  orders 


The  Mediceval  Hierarchy 


55 


of  life,  the  spiritual  and  the  temporal ;  for  it  was  maintained 
that  the  care  of  the  spiritual  and  moral  life  of  the  community 
— the  whole-hearted  pursuit  of  wisdom — was  incompatible 
with  political  administrative  work.  Granting  certain  pre¬ 
supposed  conditions,  Church  and  State  were  the  two  necessary 
embodiments  of  one  and  the  same  human  society,  the  State 
taking  charge  of  the  temporal  requirements,  and  the  Church 
of  the  spiritual  and  supernatural.  Hence  the  Holy  Roman 
Empire,  the  Mediaeval  conception  of  which  was  that  of  two 
swords  to  protect  Christianity,  the  spiritual  belonging  to 
the  Pope  and  the  temporal  to  the  Emperor.  Although 
it  claimed  continuity  with  the  Roman  Empire,  it  was  in  no 
sense  an  attempt  to  revive  the  idea  of  universal  monarchy, 
since  it  was  laid  down  that  the  Emperor,  though  he  was  the 
first  and  august  monarch — the  highest  of  Papal  vassals — 
was  not  to  aim  at  the  establishment  of  a  universal  monarchy, 
the  destruction  of  nationalities,  or  the  subjection  of  other 
nations  to  his  personal  rule.  On  the  contrary,  it  was  the 
mission  of  the  Church  to  achieve  an  ideal  union  of  mankind 
by  changing  the  heart  and  the  mind  of  man.  What  was 
required  of  the  Emperor  was  that,  in  the  first  place,  he  should 
seek  to  establish  amongst  the  nations  a  system  of  organization 
— a  League  of  Nations,  as  it  were — which  should  arbitrate 
on  international  questions,  in  order  that  war  among  Christian 
nations  might  be  brought  to  an  end.  In  the  next,  it  was  to 
be  his  duty  to  lead  the  Christian  princes  in  defence  of  the 
Faith  against  all  unbelievers.1  This  Mediaeval  Empire, 
which  dates  from  the  year  800,  when  Charlemagne  was 
crowned  Emperor  of  the  West  by  Pope  Leo  III,  continued 
to  exist  until  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  when  what 
remained  of  it  fell  finally  before  the  armies  of  Napoleon  ; 
but  until  the  thirteenth  century,  when  its  decline  definitely 
set  in,  it  was  the  centre  of  European  national  life  and  as  a 
matter  of  fact  it  did  succeed  in  preserving  peace  in  Central 
Europe  for  centuries.  It  is  of  more  than  passing  interest 
to  note  that  the  sinister  influence  which  undermined  its 


1  At  the  beginning  the  object  of  the  Empire  could  have  had  nothing 
to  do  with  the  suppression  of  heresy,  for  though  a  popular  movement  against 
heresy  existed  at  an  earlier  date,  it  was  not  until  the  latter  half  of  the  twelfth 
century  that  its  suppression  was  countenanced  by  the  Church. 


56  A  GuildsmarCs  Interpretation  of  History 


power  was  precisely  the  same  one  which  corrupted  Mediaeval 
civilization,  and  has  led  to  the  anarchy  and  confusion  of  the 
modern  world. 

Modern  historians  are  accustomed  to  look  upon  the 
inauguration  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  as  the  great  mistake 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  inasmuch  as,  by  giving  rise  to  a  long 
succession  of  quarrels  between  the  two  heads  of  Christendom 
it  led  to  a  spirit  of  religious  and  political  intolerance.  Such 
a  judgment  is  perhaps  a  superficial  one,  for  there  was  no¬ 
thing  in  the  original  conception  of  the  Empire  which  would 
necessarily  have  produced  such  results.  At  the  time  of 
its  first  promotion  a  strong  case  was  to  be  made  in  its  favour. 
Christendom  was  then  in  great  danger  of  being  overthrown 
by  the  Saracens,  while  the  Papacy  lived  in  fear  of  the 
Lombards.  The  Church  was  sorely  in  need  of  a  temporal 
defender.  Twice  did  Charlemagne  cross  the  Alps  to  rescue 
the  Papacy  from  the  clutches  of  the  Lombards,  thus  bringing 
temporal  security  to  it.  The  great  quarrel  between  the 
Popes  and  the  Emperors  over  the  Right  of  Investiture,  which 
terminated  early  in  the  twelfth  century,  defined  the  respective 
spheres  of  influence  of  the  Spiritual  and  the  Temporal  Powers. 
Once  this  source  of  difficulty  had  been  removed,  there  is 
no  reason  to  suppose  that,  in  the  ordinary  course  of  things, 
the  doctrine  as  taught  by  Pope  Gelasius  in  the  fifteenth 
century,  that  “  Christian  princes  are  to  respect  the  priest 
in  things  which  relate  to  the  soul,  while  the  priests  in  their 
turn  are  to  obey  the  laws  made  for  the  preservation  of  order 
in  worldly  matters,  so  that  the  soldier  of  God  should  not 
mix  in  temporal  affairs  and  the  worldly  authorities  have 
naught  to  say  in  spiritual  things,”  1  which  was  accepted  prior 
to  the  quarrel  over  Investiture,  might  not  have  been  resumed 
when  the  quarrel  was  ended.  Unfortunately  for  the  success 
of  the  Empire,  an  indirect  consequence  of  the  quarrel  was  the 
revival  of  Roman  Law,  and  this,  by  raising  issues  of  such 
a  nature  as  to  make  compromise  impossible,  destroyed  for 
ever  the  possibility  of  co-operation  between  Church  and  State. 
After  this  revival,  the  issue  was  no  longer  one  of  defining 
the  respective  spheres  of  influence  between  the  two  authori¬ 
ties,  but  the  more  fundamental  one  of  whether  considerations 

1  Janssen,  vol.  ii.  p.  hi. 


« 


The  Mediaeval  Hierarchy 


57 


of  principle  or  of  expediency  should  take  precedence  ; 
whether,  in  fact,  there  was  a  higher  law  which  earthly 
monarchs  should  obey,  or  whether  law  should  be  dependent 
entirely  upon  the  personal  will  of  princes.  This  issue  was 
fundamental,  and,  as  I  have  already  said,  it  made  compromise 
impossible.  As  compromise  was  impossible,  co-operation 
was  impossible.  It  became  a  question  of  who  should  rule  ; 
whether  the  Church  would  consent  to  make  herself  subservient 
to  the  ambitions  of  princes,  or  whether  political  arrangements 
were  to  be  regarded  as  part  and  parcel  of  the  ecclesiastical 
organization.  As  the  Emperors  sought  to  encroach  upon 
the  prerogatives  of  the  Church,  the  Popes  strove  to  attain 
temporal  power,  and  the  struggle  resulted  in  corrupting  both 
Church  and  State,  and  in  breaking  up  the  Mediaeval  social 
order.  In  proportion  as  the  Holy  See  succeeded  in  this 
aim  it  became  increasingly  secularized,  its  territorial  posses¬ 
sions  leading  it  to  subordinate  spiritual  duties  to  acquisitive 
ambition.  When,  after  the  Great  Schism  in  the  earlier 
part  of  the  fifteenth  century,  the  Popes  succeeded  in  asserting 
their  final  and  triumphant  absolutism,  they  became  to 
all  intents  and  purposes  mere  secular  princes,  by  whom 
religion  was  used  as  an  instrument  for  the  furtherance  of 
political  ambitions.  Their  enormous  revenues  were  spent 
upon  the  maintenance  of  Papal  armies  and  fleets  and  a 
court  unrivalled  in  its  magnificence  and  corruption.  This 
state  of  things  continued  until  the  Reformation  came  upon 
the  Church  as  a  scourge  from  God  and  paved  the  way  for 
the  counter-Reformation,  when  the  Church,  after  the  loss 
of  her  temporal  authority,  found  recompense  in  a  renewal 
of  her  spiritual  vitality. 


CHAPTER  IV 


THE  REVIVAL  OF  ROMAN  LAW 

Mention  was  made  in  the  preceding  chapter  of  the  revival 
of  Roman  Law,  which  was  incidental  to  the  quarrels  between 
the  Popes  and  the  Emperors,  and  eventually  broke  up 
Mediaeval  society  and  inaugurated  the  modern  world.  The 
importance  of  this  revival  demands  that  more  should  be 
said  about  it. 

To  understand  exactly  what  is  meant  by  the  revival 
of  Roman  Law  it  is  first  of  all  necessary  to  realize  that  though, 
as  a  completely  codified  system  resting  upon  the  will  of  the 
Emperor,  Roman  Law  had  fallen  largely  into  desuetude, 
it  did  not  disappear  entirely  from  the  world  after  the  fall 
of  the  Roman  Empire.  While  retaining  their  own  laws  and 
customs,  which  were  communal  in  character,  the  barbarian 
tribes  that  had  invaded  the  Empire  and  settled  within  its 
borders,  incorporated  in  their  tribal  codes  certain  of  the 
Roman  laws  that  did  not  clash  with  their  communal  arrange¬ 
ments.  Definite  information  upon  this  period  is  lacking, 
but  it  is  to  be  assumed  that  the  Roman  laws  which  they 
adopted  were  of  the  nature  of  rules  and  regulations  rather 
than  such  as  were  concerned  with  conduct.  It  is  natural 
to  make  this  assumption  ;  because,  in  the  first  place,  of  the 
existence  of  a  large  body  of  law,  best  described  as  regu¬ 
lations,  which  has  to  do  with  public  convenience,  and  is 
not  to  be  directly  deduced  from  moral  considerations  (the 
rule  of  the  road  is  a  well-known  example  of  this  kind 
of  law),  might  be  readily  adopted  by  peoples  possessing 
a  social  and  economic  life  entirely  different  from  the  Roman 
one ;  and  in  the  next  because,  as  the  Roman  method 
is  essentially  adapted  to  the  needs  of  a  personal  ruler,  it 
would  be  natural  that  the  chiefs  of  the  tribes  would  avail 

58 


The  Revival  of  Roman  Law 


59 


themselves  of  the  decisions  on  delicate  points  of  law 
which  had  been  arrived  at  by  the  Roman  jurists.  It  was  for 
this  reason  that  the  study  of  Roman  Law  had  never  been 
entirely  abandoned,  and  the  Visigothic  compilation  became  the 
standard  source  of  Roman  Law  throughout  Western  Europe 
during  the  first  half  of  the  Middle  Ages.  Together  with  the 
Canon  Law  of  the  Church,  Roman  Civil  Law  was  studied  at 
the  ecclesiastical  faculties  of  jurisprudence,  for  learning  during 
the  so-called  Dark  Ages  meant  little  more  than  the  salvage 
of  such  fragments  of  ancient  knowledge  as  had  survived  the 
wreck  of  Roman  civilization.1 

Though  parts  of  the  Roman  Code  which  were  concerned 
with  matters  of  convenience  became  incorporated  in  the  tribal 
law  of  the  barbarians,  Roman  Law  in  its  fundamental  and 
philosophic  sense  had  been  abandoned  in  favour  of  the 
Canon  Law  of  the  Church.  The  latter,  which  consists  of 
the  body  of  laws  and  regulations  made  or  adopted  by 
ecclesiastical  authority  for  the  government  of  the  Christian 
organization  and  its  members,  differs  as  a  judicial  science 
from  Roman  Law  and  Civil  Law,  inasmuch  as  it  is  primarily 
concerned  with  the  conduct  of  another  society,  the  Kingdom 
of  God  upon  Earth.  As  such,  its  ultimate  source  is  God. 
It  consists  of  Apostolic  letters,  ordinances  of  the  Councils, 
and  Papal  Bulls,  briefs,  or  decretals.  It  was  not  yet,  however, 
a  definitely  codified  system,  and  did  not  become  one  until 
the  twelfth  century,  when  Gratian  gave  it  a  systematic 
form.  Prior  to  the  time  of  Gratian,  the  Canon  Law  took 
the  form  of  decisions  pronounced  in  cases  submitted  to  the 
Pope  from  all  parts  of  Christendom.  By  such  means  the 
Christian  rule  was  brought  into  relation  with  the  communal 
life  of  the  tribes,  and  a  body  of  law  was  coming  into  existence 
capable  of  maintaining  the  communal  life  of  the  people  along 
with  a  higher  and  more  complex  civilization.  But  the 
promise  of  a  society  which  might  have  realized  the  Kingdom 
of  God  upon  Earth  was  never  fulfilled,  and  it  was  not  fulfilled 
because  of  the  sinister  influence  of  Roman  Law,  which  was 
resurrected  to  break  up  the  unity  of  Christendom. 

The  circumstances  that  led  to  the  revival  of  Roman  Law 
are  immediately  connected  with  the  great  quarrel  over  the 
1  Cf.  Roman  Law  in  Medicsval  Europe,  by  Sir  Paul  VinogradofF,  pp.  4-7. 


60  A  GuildsmarCs  Interpretation  of  History 


Right  of  Investiture  which  became  such  a  burning  issue 
during  the  pontificate  of  Gregory  VII.  The  organization 
of  the  Church  had  been  a  haphazard  growth.  The  Church 
shared  in  feudal  land-holding  ;  in  addition  to  the  tithes, 
immense  estates  had  come  into  her  possession,  by  bequests 
from  the  faithful,  or  through  the  labours  of  the  monastic 
orders,  who  had  reclaimed  vast  tracts  of  waste  land.  For 
the  defence  of  her  property  the  Church  resorted  to  secular 
means.  Bishops  and  abbots,  confiding  their  domains  to 
laymen,  on  condition  of  assistance  with  the  sword  in  case 
of  need,  became  Temporal  Lords — with  vassals  to  fight  for 
them,  and  with  courts  of  justice — exercising  all  the  privileges 
common  to  lay  lords.  On  the  other  hand,  there  were  bishop- 
dukes,  bishop-counts,  and  the  like,  who  were  vassals  of 
other  lords,  and  especially  of  the  king,  from  whom  they 
received  the  investiture  of  their  temporalities.  In  some 
cases,  abbeys  and  churches  had  been  founded  by  the  faithful 
on  condition  that  the  right  of  patronage — that  is,  the  choice 
of  beneficiaries — should  be  reserved  for  them  and  their  heirs. 
Thus  in  various  ways  ecclesiastical  benefices  were  gradually 
transformed  into  fiefs,  and  lay  suzerains  claimed  the  same 
rights  over  ecclesiastics  as  over  other  vassals  from  whom 
they  received  homage  and  invested  them  with  the  emblems 
of  their  spiritual  offices. 

Had  this  system  not  been  grossly  abused,  it  might  have 
continued  indefinitely.  During  the  vacancy  of  a  bishopric 
or  abbey,  its  revenues  went  to  fill  the  royal  treasury,  and 
when  short  of  money,  monarchs  everywhere  took  advantage 
of  their  positions  as  patrons  and  allowed  benefices  to  remain 
without  pastors  for  long  periods.  The  Emperor  Otto  II 
was  charged  with  having  practised  simony  in  this  connection  ; 
while  under  Conrad  II  the  abuse  became  prevalent.  At 
the  close  of  the  reign  of  William  Rufus,  one  archbishopric, 
four  bishoprics,  and  eleven  abbeys  in  England  were  found 
to  be  without  pastors.  At  a  Synod  of  Reims  in  1049  the 
Bishops  of  Nevers  and  Coutances  affirmed  that  they  bought 
their  bishoprics.  The  system  led,  moreover,  to  favouritism. 
Lay  authorities  interfered  in  favour  of  those  in  whom  they 
were  interested,  so  that,  in  one  way  and  another,  the  system 
became  a  crying  scandal  and  Gregory  VII  resolved  to  put 


The  Revival  of  Roman  Law 


61 


a  slop  to  it.  He  considered,  too,  that  it  was  intolerable 
that  a  layman,  whether  emperor,  king,  or  baron,  should 
invest  ecclesiastics  with  the  emblems  of  spiritual  office — 
ecclesiastical  investiture  should  come  only  from  ecclesiastics. 
It  was  this  that  led  to  the  great  struggle  over  the  Right  of 
Investiture.  To  the  Emperor  Henry  IV  it  was  highly 
undesirable  that  the  advantages  and  revenues  accruing 
from  lay  investiture  should  be  surrendered ;  it  was 
reasonable,  he  thought,  that  ecclesiastics  should  receive 
investiture  of  temporalities  from  their  temporal  protectors 
and  suzerains.  After  a  bitter  struggle,  which  was  carried 
on  all  over  Christendom,  a  compromise  was  agreed  upon 
and  ratified  at  the  Diet  of  Worms  in  1122.  The  Emperor, 
on  the  one  hand,  preserved  his  suzerainty  over  ecclesiastical 
benefices  ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  he  ceased  to  confer 
the  ring  and  crozier,  and  thereby  not  only  lost  the  right  of 
refusing  the  election  on  the  grounds  of  unworthiness,  but 
was  deprived  also  of  an  efficacious  means  of  maintaining 
vacancies  in  ecclesiastical  offices. 

Meanwhile,  the  dispute  led  to  the  establishment  at  Raven¬ 
na  of  a  faculty  of  jurisprudence,  under  the  patronage  of 
the  Emperor,  which  had  important  consequences.  Countess 
Matilda  of  Tuscany — a  staunch  supporter  of  Gregory  VII — 
in  1084  sought  to  counteract  the  influence  of  this  Imperialistic 
school  by  the  creation  of  a  centre  for  the  study  of  Roman  Law 
that  would  act  on  the  Papal  behalf  ;  and  it  was  in  connection 
with  this  school  at  Bologna  that  Irnerius,  who  had  already 
taught  didactics  and  rhetoric,  began  to  devote  himself  to  the 
study  of  jurisprudence.  Prior  to  this  date  the  study  of  Roman 
Law  had  been  traditional  rather  than  scholarly.  Exponents 
of  the  law  did  not  go  back  to  the  original  sources  of  legal 
science,  but  took  the  law  very  much  as  they  found  it — as  a 
thing  of  custom  or  tradition,  whose  credentials  they  had 
no  reason  to  suspect.  Irnerius,  however,  abandoned  this 
more  or  less  casual  method  study  in  favour  of  a  return  to 
the  original  sources  of  Roman  Law,  taking  the  Justinian 
Code  as  a  guide.  It  is  from  this  new  departure  that  the 
revival  of  Roman  Law  is  to  be  dated.1  The  researches 

1  As  to  the  exact  contribution  of  Irnerius  to  the  revival,  the  following 
passage  of  the  chronicler,  Richard  of  Ursperg,  supplies  us  with  an  important 


62  A  Guildsmari s  Interpretation  of  History 


undertaken  in  the  first  instance  to  strengthen  the  Papal 
case  against  the  Emperor  had  results  very  different  from 
what  had  been  intended.  They  resulted  in  the  revival  of 
a  theory  of  law  which  was  favourable  to  the  Emperor  rather 
than  to  the  Pope,  and  which  immediately  caused  the  struggle 
between  them  to  be  embittered,  by  raising  in  an  acute  form 
the  question  of  supremacy,  and  eventually  undermining 
Mediaeval  civilization  by  dethroning  the  Canon  Law  in 
favour  of  the  Roman  Code. 

That  the  Glossators,  as  the  pioneers  of  this  revival  were 
called,  did  not  foresee  the  consequences  of  their  work — that 
they  did  not  see  that  they  were  seeking  the  promotion  of 
a  system  of  law  antipathetic  to  everything  that  Christianity 
stood  for — is  probably  true.  At  the  same  time,  there  is 
no  reason  to  doubt  that  it  was  the  superficial  brilliance  of 
the  Roman  Code  which  led  them  astray.  They  were  in¬ 
fatuated  by  its  beauty,  its  searching  analyses,  its  logical 
deductions,  and  brilliant  explanations.  It  had  such  a 
simple  and  plausible  way  of  dealing  with  immediately 
practical  issues  that  they  came  to  regard  it  as  the  very 
embodiment  of  common  sense,  and  deemed  it  to  be  entitled  to 
the  same  universality  of  application  as  the  laws  of  mathe¬ 
matics  and  logic,  little  suspecting  the  iniquity  that  reigned 
at  its  heart.  It  was,  as  we  saw  in  the  first  chapter,  originally 
formulated  for  the  purpose  of  preserving  a  capitalistic  and 
corrupt  society  from  premature  dissolution,  and  we  shall 
see  that  its  revival,  by  seeking  always  the  promotion  of 
individual  and  private  interests  at  the  expense  of  communal 
and  public  ones,  operated  to  introduce  into  Mediaeval  society 
the  same  evil  elements  as  had  corrupted  Rome.  Unable 
to  conceive  the  practical  possibility  of  realizing  justice  in 
a  society  whose  communal  ties  had  been  dissolved  by  an 
unregulated  currency,  Roman  Law  had  addressed  itself 
to  the  more  immediately  practicable  though  less  ambitious 
task  of  maintaining  order.  This  it  achieved  by  disregarding 

clue.  It  reads  :  “  Dominus  Irnerius,  at  the  request  of  the  Countess  Matilda, 
renewed  the  books  of  the  laws,  which  had  long  been  neglected  ;  and,  in 
accordance  with  the  manner  in  which  they  had  been  compiled  by  the  Emperor 
Justinian  of  divine  memory,  arranged  them  in  divisions,  adding,  perchance, 
a  few  words  here  and  there  ”  ( The  Universities  of  Europe  in  the  Middle 
Ages,  by  Hastings  Rashdall,  vol.  i.  pp.  116). 


The  Revival  of  Roman  Law 


63 


moral  issues,  by  inculcating  the  policy  of  following  always 
the  line  of  least  resistance  (thus  exalting  momentary  ex¬ 
pediency  above  considerations  of  right),  by  giving  legal 
security  and  sanction  to  private  property  (no  matter  by 
what  means  it  had  been  obtained)  as  the  easiest  way  of 
avoiding  continual  strife  among  neighbours.  It  was,  in 
fact,  a  system  of  law  designed  primarily  for  the  purpose 
of  enabling  rich  men  to  live  among  bad,  as  emphatically 
as  the  Canon  Law  was  designed  to  enable  good  men  to  live 
among  bad  ;  for  while  the  Canon  Law  based  its  authority 
upon  the  claim  of  right,  the  ultimate  appeal  of  Roman  Law 
was  to  might  rather  than  to  right,  since,  according  to  it, 
right  and  wrong  are  not  eternally  fixed  and  immutable 
principles — not  something  above  and  beyond  personal 
predilections — but  are  dictated  entirely  by  considerations  of 
expediency  and  convenience.  In  a  word,  the  Roman  Law 
does  not  conceive  of  law  as  a  higher  authority  over  men — 
as  a  development  of  the  moral  law — but  postulates  the 
existence  of  a  divorce  between  law  and  morality  as  two 
entirely  incompatible  and  opposed  principles. 

Naturally,  systems  of  law  differing  so  fundamentally 
as  the  Roman  and  the  Canon  Laws  sought  the  support  of 
different  sanctions.  The  Canon  Law,  as  we  saw,  rested 
on  the  assumption  that  there  was  a  higher  law  of  the  universe, 
and  that  all  justice  proceeds  from  God.  Accordingly,  it 
happened  under  Canon  Law  that  the  ruler  was  merely  a 
functionary — the  agent  or  director  of  right — exercising  power 
conditionally  upon  the  fulfilment  of  duties  which  were 
enjoined  upon  him.  On  the  contrary,  Roman  Law,  sub¬ 
stituting  order  for  justice  as  the  aim  of  law,  sought  its 
ultimate  sanction  in  the  will  of  the  Emperor,  whom  it  invested 
with  sovereign  power,  declaring  him  to  be  the  source  of 
all  law,  which  could  only  be  altered  by  his  own  arbitrary 
decree,  in  general  as  in  individual  cases.  This  was  a  natural 
and  inevitable  deduction  from  the  Roman  theory.  Making 
no  claim  to  supernatural  revelation,  it  was  driven  by  this 
self-imposed  limitation  to  search  for  authority  not  in  the 
ascendancy  of  truth,  of  ideas,  or  of  things,  but  in  the  authority 
of  persons,  finally  in  one  person — the  Roman  Emperor. 
Hence  it  is  that  Roman  Law  is  by  nature  opposed  to  demo- 


64  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


cratic  ideals.  For  whereas,  under  Canon  Law,  it  can  be 
maintained  that  if  the  ruler  is  merely  a  functionary  exercising 
powers  conditionally  upon  the  fulfilment  of  certain  duties  he 
may  be  challenged  if  he  fail  in  them,  there  can  be  no  appeal 
on  a  basis  of  principle  or  right  against  the  kind  of  authority 
exalted  by  Roman  Law,  for  how  can  the  king  do  wrong  if 
the  source  of  law  resides  in  his  personal  will.  In  consequence, 
rebellion  against  the  abuse  of  authority  in  all  countries 
where  Roman  Law  obtains  takes  the  form  of  an  appeal  from 
the  Divine  Right  of  Kings  to  the  Divine  Right  of  the  People  ; 
that  is,  from  one  will  to  many  wills.  And  this  can  merely 
increase  the  confusion,  since  as  apart  from  the  recognition  of 
the  existence  of  an  authority  which  transcends  the  individual 
will  no  agreement  is  possible  among  a  multitude  of  wills, 
reaction  to  the  authority  of  an  autocracy  can  only  be  a  matter 
of  time.  It  is  a  vicious  circle  from  which  there  is  no  escape, 
as  the  modern  world  must  discover  sooner  or  later. 

The  tendency  inherent  in  Roman  Law  towards  autocracy 
was  not  long  in  manifesting  itself.  The  Commentators, 
who  succeeded  the  Glossators,  led  the  way.  Perceiving  that 
their  own  personal  interests  were  to  be  served  by  espousing 
the  cause  of  the  Emperor  rather  than  that  of  the  Pope, 
they  declared  that  the  Roman  Empire  still  existed  inasmuch 
as  the  Roman  Emperors  of  the  German  Empire  were  the 
legal  successors  of  the  Emperors  of  Rome,  and  that,  in 
consequence,  the  will  of  the  Emperor  was  still  law  and  the 
Justinian  Code  binding.  This  speciousness  is,  however,  to 
be  regarded  as  the  merest  camouflage.  In  the  first  place, 
because  subsequent  developments  suggest  that  this  dogma 
of  continuity  was  advanced  only  because  the  lawyers  found 
in  it  a  convenient  fiction  whereby  the  rule  of  the  lawyers 
might  be  substituted  for  the  rule  of  Emperor  and  Pope  alike  ; 
and  in  the  next  place,  because  it  so  happened  that  while, 
in  theory,  what  was  received  was  the  law  of  Justinian’s 
books,  in  practice  what  was  received  was  the  system  which 
the  Italian  Commentators  had  long  been  elaborating,  and,  as 
Gierke  insists,  this  was  an  important  difference.  The  system 
which  the  Commentators  advanced  was  a  thing  of  compromise 
between  the  old  Roman  Law  and  the  existing  German  Law. 
It  was  the  thin  edge  of  the  wedge  ;  it  was  designed  to  give 


The  Revival  of  Roman  Law 


65 


immediate  practical  results,  and  it  was  successful.  A  start 
was  made,  and  as  time  wore  on  the  system  became  more 
and  more  Roman,  and  less  and  less  German,  until,  eventually, 
it  became  almost  purely  Roman.1  The  Hohenstaufen 
family  fell  into  the  trap  which  the  Commentators  had  so 
carefully  prepared  for  them.  They  accepted  the  decision 
of  the  Commentators  as  a  justification  of  their  absolutism, 
and  henceforth  did  all  in  their  power  to  secure  the  acceptance 
of  the  new  code.  Frederick  Barbarossa  at  once  claimed 
for  himself  all  the  rights  which  the  Caesars  had  exercised, 
and  Roman  Law  was  used  by  the  Emperors  as  a  weapon 
against  Canon  Law  in  ecclesiastical-political  disputes.  These 
new  developments  aroused  the  opposition  of  the  Church, 
which  set  itself  against  the  spread  of  Roman  Law.  In 
1180  Pope  Alexander  III  forbade  the  monks  to  study  the 
Justinian  Code.  In  1219  Honorius  III  extended  this  pro¬ 
hibition  to  all  priests,  and  in  the  following  year  he  forbade 
laymen,  under  pain  of  excommunication,  to  give  or  listen  to 
lectures  on  the  Justinian  Code  in  the  University  of  Paris. 
In  1254  Innocent  IV  extended  this  last  prohibition  to  France, 
England,  Scotland,  Spain,  and  Hungary.  But  such  pro¬ 
hibitions  were  of  no  avail.  Roman  Law  found  support 
among  the  secular  princes,  and  it  was  proving  itself  too 
profitable  to  those  who  followed  it  to  be  easily  sup¬ 
pressed  under  such  circumstances.  It  is  said  that  so 
eager  were  students  to  acquire  a  knowledge  of  it  that  at 
one  time  the  study  of  theology  was  almost  abandoned. 

Meanwhile,  efforts  were  made  to  meet  the  danger  by  more 
positive  measures.  In  1151  Gratian  published  the  Decretum, 
in  which  the  materials  collected  by  a  succession  of  Canonists 
were  re-edited  and  arranged  with  a  superior  completeness. 
His  labours  paved  the  way  for  the  first  official  code  of  Canon 
Law  which  was  promulgated  by  Gregory  IX  in  1234.  It 
was  hoped  that  the  publication  of  this  Papal  law-book  would, 
by  defining  the  issues,  settle  the  dispute  once  and  for  all  ; 
but,  unfortunately,  it  did  nothing  of  the  kind.  The  struggle 
between  Church  and  State  increased  in  intensity  and  bitter¬ 
ness.  In  the  year  1302  Boniface  VIII  promulgated  his  famous 

1  Cf.  Introduction  to  Gierke’s  Political  Theories  of  the  Middle  Ages,  by 
F.  W.  Maitland,  p.  xv. 


5 


66  A  Giiildsmmv s  Interpretation  of  History 


Bull,  Unam  Sanctum,  in  which  the  case  for  Papal  supremacy 
was  set  forth.  Its  main  propositions  were  drawn  from  the 
writings  of  St.  Bernard,  Hugh  of  St.  Victor,  St.  Thomas 
Aquinas,  and  the  letters  of  Innocent  III.  As  such,  it 
summarizes  the  conclusions  of  thirteenth-century  thinkers 
on  the  relations  of  Church  and  State.  The  claim  for  supremacy 
rests  on  the  affirmation  that  the  spiritual  authority  is  higher 
than  the  temporal  authority,  that  the  Church,  as  the  guardian 
of  the  Christian  law  of  morals,  has  the  right  to  establish 
and  guide  the  secular  power,  and  to  judge  it  when  it  does 
not  act  rightly.1  It  was  the  last  desperate  attempt  which 
the  Papacy  made  to  save  Christian  morals  from  corruption 
at  the  hands  of  the  Roman  lawyers.  It  did  not  have  the 
desired  effect,  for  the  secular  authorities  treated  with  scorn 
the  idea  that  they  should  surrender  unconditionally  to  the 
Pope.  It  was  a  situation  that  would  never  have  arisen  but 
for  the  revival  of  Roman  Law.  The  Popes  found  themselves 
in  a  difficult  position.  The  choice,  as  they  saw  it,  was  between 
allowing  the  whole  fabric  of  Mediaeval  civilization  to  be 
undermined  by  the  worst  of  Pagan  influences,  or  of  asserting 
the  supremacy  of  the  Papacy  in  secular  affairs.  It  was 
a  desperate  remedy  to  seek,  and  one  conceivably  worse  than 
the  disease.  It  was  an  attempt  to  seek  to  effect  by  external 
means  a  change  that  can  come  only  from  within.  Experience 
teaches  us  that  reform  cannot  be  imposed  from  without 
in  that  kind  of  way.  But  what  is  so  easy  for  us,  with  the 
experience  of  attempted  reform  behind  us,  to  see  to-day 
was  not  so  easy  to  see  in  the  Middle  Ages,  when  methods 
were  still  untried,  and  in  justice  to  the  Mediaeval  Papacy  we 

1  The  chief  passage  of  Unam  Sanctum  should  be  quoted.  It  reads  : 
“  There  are  two  swords,  the  spiritual  and  the  temporal ;  our  Lord  said  not 
of  these  two  swords,  f  it  is  too  much/  but  ‘  it  is  enough.'  Both  are  in  the 
power  of  the  Church  ;  the  one  spiritual,  to  be  used  by  the  Church  ;  the 
other  material,  for  the  Church  ;  the  former  that  of  priests,  the  latter  that 
of  kings  and  soldiers,  to  be  wielded  at  the  command  and  by  the  sufferance 
of  the  priest.  One  sword  must  be  under  the  other,  the  temporal  under 
the  spiritual.  .  .  .  The  spiritual  instituted  the  temporal  power,  and  judges 
whether  that  power  is  well  exercised.  The  eternal  verse  of  Jeremiah  is 
adduced.  ‘  If  the  temporal  power  errs,  it  is  judged  by  the  spiritual.'  To 
deny  this  is  to  assert  with  the  heretical  Manicheans  two  co-equal  principles. 
We  therefore  assert,  define,  and  pronounce  that  it  is  necessary  to  salvation 
to  believe  that  every  human  being  is  subject  to  the  Pontiff  of  Rome  " 
(Milman’s  History  of  Latin  Christianity,  vol.  vii.  p.  125). 


The  Revival  of  Roman  Law 


67 


ought  at  least  to  acknowledge  that,  whatever  motives  may 
have  actuated  it,  whatever  mistakes  it  may  have  made, 
it  fought,  at  any  rate,  on  the  right  side.  It  did  not  allow 
civilization  to  become  corrupted,  exploitation  to  be  legalized, 
without  first  making  desperate  efforts  to  prevent  it ;  and, 
though  the  Church  itself  in  turn  became  corrupted  by  the 
evil  influences  which  had  been  let  loose  upon  the  world, 
it  resolutely  fought  them  so  long  as  the  issue  was  doubtful. 

Although  the  Roman  lawyers  had  been  encouraged  and 
patronized  by  the  Emperors,  it  was  not  until  the  fourteenth 
century,  when  Charles  IV  assigned  to  jurists  of  the  Roman 
School  positions  in  the  Imperial  chancery,  placing  them 
on  a  par  with  the  lower  nobility,  that  Roman  Law  began 
to  exercise  much  influence  in  Germany.  Henceforth  the 
Roman  lawyers  used  all  their  influence  and  energy  in  securing 
recognition  of  the  Roman  Code  as  the  one  most  fit  for  universal 
application.  In  1495  the  “  Reichskammergericht  ” — the 
central  Imperial  Court — deliberately  adopted  Roman  Law 
for  its  guidance  as  the  common  law  of  the  Empire.  In 
1534  and  1537  the  principalities  of  Julick  and  Berg  (in  the 
Rhine  province) resolved  to  remodel  their  laws  on  the  Roman 
pattern,  in  order  to  avoid  clashing  with  the  central  Imperial 
Court.  Under  the  influence  of  such  considerations  the 
movement  towards  the  codification  of  local  laws,  on  the 
basis  of  their  reformation  and  of  the  reception  of  Roman 
doctrine,  sweeps  over  Germany.  The  towns  of  Worms  and 
Nuremberg  (1479)  were  among  the  first  to  cany  through 
such  reformations.  Most  of  the  monarchically  organized 
principalities  followed  suit,  with  the  notable  exception  of 
some  of  the  North  German  States,  which  remained  faithful 
to  the  jurisprudence  of  the  Sachenspeigel 1 — of  which 
we  shall  speak  hereafter.  Hitherto  faculties  of  jurisprudence, 
consisting  mainly  of  experts  in  the  Canon  Law,  had  been 
complements  of  the  theological  faculties.  Now,  however, 
foundations  were  made  in  the  German  universities  for  the 
teaching  of  Roman  LaW  as  a  secular  study. 

The  reception  of  Roman  Law  appears  mainly  as  a  move¬ 
ment  of  the  upper  classes  and  of  the  political  authorities  con¬ 
nected  with  them.  Once  it  had  succeeded  in  establishing  itself 

1  Cf.  Vinogradoff,  pp.  127-8. 


68  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


at  the  top,  dependent  bodies  found  it  to  their  advantage 
to  come  into  line.  Its  rapid  spread  in  the  German  towns 
in  the  early  sixteenth  century  was  due  primarily  to  the 
rapid  expansion  of  German  commerce  about  that  time, 
which  created  a  demand  for  a  uniform  system  of  law.  Mediae¬ 
val  Law,  where  it  was  not  of  Canonical  origin  (that  is,  the 
law  of  tribal  origin),  was  a  local  affair.  As  a  unity,  German 
Law  did  not  exist  at  the  close  of  the  Middle  Ages.  It  was 
broken  up  into  countless  local  customs,  which,  for  this  very 
reason,  were  unable  to  tackle  the  wider  problems  of  civil 
intercourse  consequent  upon  the  expansion  of  trade.  The 
fundamental  principle  of  German  Customary  Law  amounted 
to  a  recognition  of  the  right  of  each  group  of  citizens  to  apply 
its  own  customary  ideas  to  the  dealings  of  members  with  one 
another.  The  law  of  knights  and  of  fees  was  differentiated 
not  only  from  the  law  of  the  country  in  general  but  also  from 
municipal  law,  guild  law,  and  peasant  law  ;  while,  further, 
there  was  the  great  cleavage  between  the  lay  and  the  eccle¬ 
siastical  courts.  The  laws  of  these  different  groups  remained 
in  close  touch  with  popular  conceptions,  and  sometimes 
attained  considerable  eminence  in  their  treatment  of  legal 
problems,  but  they  were  not  connected  with  any  legal  system 
and  lacked  precision  in  details.  Most  legal  questions  had 
to  be  settled  finally  by  unwritten  or  unenacted  law,  which 
had  to  be  “  found  ”  for  the  purpose.  Thus  it  came  about 
that  at  the  very  moment  when  in  Germany  the  social  and 
economic  unit  was  changing  from  a  local  to  a  national  one, 
when  German  society  was  enjoying  a  kind  of  hothouse 
prosperity,  resulting  from  its  commercial  relations  with 
Italy  and  the  Levant  on  one  side  and  with  the  Scandinavian 
North,  Poland,  and  Russia  on  the  other,  German  Customary 
Law  was  crippled  by  the  absence  of  a  common  code  of  laws 
and  a  lack  of  professional  learning.  Further  progress  was 
possible  only  through  providing  a  remedy  for  these  defects, 
and  this  the  Roman  lawyers  were  able  to  do.  They  triumphed 
because  at  this  critical  period  they  were  able  to  supply  a 
felt  need  for  a  uniform  system  of  law.  Mediaeval  Customary 
Law  went  down  not  because  it  was  not  good  law,  not  because 
it  was  by  its  nature  unfitted  for  grappling  with  the  problems 
of  a  wider  social  intercourse,  but  because  its  systematic 


The  Revival  of  Roman  Law 


69 


study  had  been  too  long  neglected  and  it  was  unable  to  offer 
effective  resistance  to  the  disciplined  enemy.1 

Although  Mediaeval  Customary  Law  was  defeated,  it 
put  up  a  good  fight  towards  the  finish.  In  the  same  way 
that  scholars  set  to  work  to  codify  the  Canon  Law  when 
its  position  was  threatened  by  the  spread  of  Roman  Law, 
so  the  Customary  Law  found  scholars  anxious  to  save  it. 
Many  authoritative  treatises  on  Customary  Law  now  made 
their  appearance.  The  most  remarkable  and  influential 
of  these  was  compiled  by  Eike  von  Repgow  on  the  law  of 
the  Saxons.  It  provided  the  courts  of  Saxon  Germany 
with  a  firm  basis  in  jurisprudence,  which  was  widely  accepted 
and  maintained.  The  Northern  Territories,  armed  with  this 
jurisprudence  of  the  “  Sachenspeigel,”  opposed  a  stubborn  re¬ 
sistance  to  the  encroachments  of  Roman  Law.  Commenting 
on  this  fact,  Sir  Paul  Vinogradoff  says :  “  This  proves 

that  the  wholesale  reception  of  Roman  rules  is  not  to  be 
accounted  for  by  any  inherent  incompetence  in  German 
Law,  since  where,  as  in  Saxon  lands,  excessive  particularism 
and  uncertainty  were  counteracted,  German  Law  proved 
quite  able  to  stand  its  ground.”  3 

This  admission  from  such  a  high  authority  on  Roman 
Law  is  important,  and  it  becomes  doubly  important  when 
considered  in  connection  with  another  passage,  in  which 
he  expresses  his  opinion  as  to  the  motives  which  led  to  the 
reception  of  Roman  Law.  “  It  is  evident,”  he  says,  “  that 
the  reception  of  Roman  Law  depended  on  political  causes  : 
the  legal  system  was  subordinated  to  the  idea  of  the  State 
towering  over  individuals  and  classes,  and  free  from  the 
intermixture  of  feudalism.  It  was  bound  to  appeal  to  the 
minds  of  all  the  pioneers  of  the  State  conception,  to  ambitious 
Emperors,  grasping  territorial  princes,  reforming  legists, 
and  even  clerical  representatives  of  law  and  order.  Coming 
as  it  did  from  an  age  of  highly  developed  social  intercourse, 
Roman  Law  satisfied  in  many  respects  the  requirements 
of  economic  development.’^  In  other  words,  Roman  Law 
succeeded  because  it  gave  support  to  the  individual  who 
pursued  his  own  private  interests  without  regard  to  the 
commonweal,  without  concern  even  whether  others  were 
1  Cf.  Vinogradoff,  pp.  109-11.  2  Ibid.,  p.  113.  3  Ibid.,  p.  130-1. 


70  A  Guildsman’s  Interpretation  of  History 


thereby  ruined.  Hence  it  was  that  the  introduction  of  the 
Roman  Code  created  unspeakable  confusion  in  every  grade 
of  society.  Exactly  in  proportion  as  it  grew  and  prevailed, 
freedom  and  liberty  went  to  the  wall.  The  lawyers  invested 
avaricious  and  ambitious  princes  and  landlords  with  legal 
authority  not  only  to  deprive  the  peasants  of  their  communal 
rights,  but  to  evict  them  from  their  life-lease  possessions 
and  to  increase  their  taxes.  Such  immoral  procedure 
destroyed  the  feeling  of  brotherhood  in  communities  and 
encouraged  enormously  the  spirit  of  avarice.  The  vocation 
of  law  degenerated  everywhere  into  a  vulgar  moneymaking 
trade.  On  every  side  it  sowed  the  seeds  of  discord,  and  the 
people  lost  their  confidence  in  the  sanctity  and  impartiality 
of  the  law. 

There  is  an  amusing  story  of  a  French  lady  who,  visiting 
Orleans  and  seeing  so  many  law  students,  exclaimed  :  “  Oh, 

woe,  woe  !  In  our  neighbourhood  there  is  but  one  attorney, 
and  he  keeps  the  whole  country  in  litigation.  What  mischief 
will  not  this  horde  make.”1  Everywhere  the  lawyers  excite 
the  indignation  of  public-spirited  men.  The  charge  is  brought 
against  them  that  they  create  rights  and  discover  wrongs 
where  none  exist,  that  they  encourage  greed  in  the  merchants, 
that  they  disgust  men  with  public  life  by  complicating  matters 
with  interminable  formalities  and  tiresome  trifles.  Old 
customs  and  unwritten  laws  lose  their  force  ;  the  lawyers 
regard  as  valid  nothing  that  cannot  be  sustained  by  docu¬ 
mentary  evidence.  In  a  sermon  preached  in  Germany  in 
1515  we  find  the  following  :  “  When  I  warn  you  to  beware 

of  usurers  and  of  those  who  would  plunder  you,  I  also  warn 
you  to  beware  of  advocates,  who  now  prevail.  For  the 
last  twenty  or  thirty  years  they  have  increased  like  poison- 
weeds  and  are  worse  than  usurers,  for  they  take  away  not 
only  your  money  but  your  rights  and  your  honour.  They 
have  substituted  a  foreign  code  for  the  national  one,  and 
questions  that  used  to  be  settled  in  two  or  three  days  now 
take  as  many  months  and  years.  What  a  pity  people  cannot 
get  justice  as  they  did  before  they  knew  these  liars  and 
deceivers  whom  no  one  wanted.” 2 

If  there  be  any  comfort  to  be  got  from  this  painful  story 

1  Janssen,  vol.  ii.  p.  173.  •  Ibid.,  vol.  ii.  p.  175. 


The  Revival  of  Roman  Law 


71 


it  is  that  in  the  long  run  the  Emperors  whose  ambitions 
first  let  this  evil  loose  upon  the  world  got  nothing  out  of  it 
for  themselves.  They  were,  as  much  as  the  peasantry,  a 
part  of  the  Mediaeval  order  of  society,  and  the  spread  of  Roman 
Law  undermined  their  power  as  effectively  as  it  destroyed 
the  prosperity  of  the  peasantry.  The  system  of  private 
warfare  which  existed  in  pre-Christian  times  had  never  been 
abolished  within  the  Empire,  but  it  had  been  kept  within 
certain  bounds.  It  was  permissible  only  under  certain 
circumstances,  when  authorities  refused  or  had  not  the  power 
to  interfere.  Certain  formalities  were  to  be  observed.  Com¬ 
batants  were  not  to  attack  an  enemy  before  giving  him  three 
days’  notice.  Hostilities  were  to  be  suspended  on  certain 
days,  called  “  The  truce  of  God.”  Certain  persons,  such  as 
clergymen,  pilgrims,  labourers,  and  vine-tenders,  and  certain 
places,  such  as  churches  and  cemeteries,  were  to  be  respected. 
But  in  later  times,  as  a  consequence  of  the  corrupting  influence 
of  Roman  Law,  which  spread  broadcast  the  seeds  of  discord 
and  increased  greed  and  avarice  among  the  princes,  this 
spirit  of  chivalry  disappeared,  and  the  mighty  availed  them¬ 
selves  of  every  opportunity  to  oppress  the  weak.  Every 
description  of  violence  and  outrage  went  unpunished,  and 
the  Empire  was  a  prey  to  anarchy  and  confusion.  Hence 
it  was  that  for  once  ecclesiastics  and  lawyers  came  together 
in  face  of  a  common  peril,  and  the  doctrine  was  taught 
that  social  salvation  could  be  found  only  by  the  Emperor 
asserting  his  ancient  authority.  Cardinal  Nicholas  of  Cusa, 
the  great  ecclesiastical  and  secular  reformer  of  the  fifteenth 
century,  voiced  the  popular  sentiment  when  he  blamed  the 
Emperors  for  believing  that  a  remedy  could  be  found  by  gentle 
means.  “  What  but  ruin,”  he  says,  “  is  to  be  expected 
when  each  one  thinks  of  himself  ?  If  the  sovereign  hand  has 
lost  its  power  to  quell  interior  dissensions,  avarice  and  greed 
will  prevail,  war  and  private  quarrels  will  increase,  the 
dismembered  Empire  will  go  to  ruin,  and  what  has  unjustly 
been  acquired  will  be  squandered.  Let  not  the  princes 
imagine  that  they  will  long  retain  what  they  have  plundered 
from  the  Empire  ;  when  they  have  broken  all  the  ties  that 
bind  the  States,  and  mangled  the  head  and  the  limbs,  there 
must  be  an  end  of  all  authority  ;  there  is  none  left  to  whom 


72  A  Guildsmari’s  Interpretation  of  History 


to  turn  for  help — and  where  there  is  no  order  there  is  anarchy, 
there  is  no  more  safety  for  any  one.  While  the  princes  are 
fighting  among  themselves  a  class  will  arise  who  will  know 
no  right  but  the  force  of  arms,  and  as  the  princes  have  destroyed 
the  Empire  they  in  their  turn  will  be  destroyed  by  the 
rabble.  Men  will  seek  for  the  German  Empire  and  not  find 
it.  Strangers  will  divide  our  lands  and  we  shall  be  subject 
to  foreign  powers/' 1  But  the  Emperor  was  powerless.  His 
Empire  had  been  disintegrated  by  Roman  Law. 

1  Janssen,  vol.  ii.  pp.  149-50. 


CHAPTER  V 


ROMAN  LAW  IN  ENGLAND 

Passing  on  from  a  consideration  of  the  reception  of  Roman 
Law  in  Germany  to  a  consideration  of  its  influence  in  England 
it  will  be  necessary  in  the  first  place  to  challenge  the  opinion 
of  the  legal  profession  that  law  in  This  country  is  English 
and  not  Roman. 

In  the  sense  in  which  the  legal  profession  use  the  word 
Roman,  no  doubt  their  judgment  is  well-founded.  The 
legal  mind  is  fond  of  hair-splitting  technicalities  and  differ¬ 
ences,  and  without  doubt  they  have  their  reasons  for  believing 
that  English  Law  differs  from  Roman  Law,  though  I  have 
not  succeeded  in  discovering  what  they  are.  But  any 
decision  in  this  matter  must  depend  upon  how  Roman  Law 
is  defined.  If  emphasis  is  to  be  given  to  secondary  details, 
then  it  may  be  that  experts  could  bring  sufficient  evidence 
to  show  that  English  and  Roman  law  are  very  different. 
But  if  we  take  our  stand  upon  broad,  fundamental  propositions, 
this  is  clearly  not  the  case.  One  does  not  need  to  be  a  legal 
expert  to  understand  that  English  Law  to-day  is  in  all  its 
essentials  a  law  designed  to  enable  rich  men  to  live  among 
poor  as  emphatically  as  Mediaeval  Law  was  designed  to  enable 
good  men  to  live  among  bad,  and  that  this  different  moral 
aim  separates  it  from  English  Mediaeval  Law  as  completely 
as  it  identifies  it  with  the  Roman  Code.  English  Law  to-day 
may  have  historical  continuity  with  the  Common  Law  of 
the  earlier  Middle  Ages,  but  in  its  informing  spirit,  its  broad, 
basic  principles  and  framework,  there  is  no  denying  it  is 
Roman  through  and  through.  The  writers  of  legal  textbooks 
such  as  Bracton  based  their  ideas  upon  Roman  Law,  and  it 
was  always  in  the  minds  of  lawyers  for  guidance  and  com¬ 
parison  if  it  was  not  actually  quoted  from  the  bench.  Every- 


74  A  GvAldsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


where  English  Law,  like  Roman,  exalts  private  interests  at 
the  expense  of  communal  ones,  and  in  consequence  conceives 
of  the  State  as  an  instrument  for  the  maintenance  of  order 
rather  than  the  enforcement  of  justice.  For  a  law  which 
exalts  private  interests  is  essentially  an  instrument  of  anarchy, 
and  maintains  order  only  for  the  purpose  of  putting  off  the 
evil  day.1 

In  England,  as  on  the  Continent,  the  principles  of  Roman 
Law  were  imposed  from  above,  and  got  a  footing  by  appealing 
to  the  immediate  self-interest  of  the  monarchy.  Henry  II 
saw  their  value  as  a  means  of  increasing  his  personal  power 
at  the  expense  of  his  barons,  and  it  was  in  his  reign  that  the 
process  which  culminated  in  the  highly  centralized  monarchy 
of  the  Tudors  began  to  make  headway.  Henry  had  destroyed 
the  military  independence  of  the  barons  by  instituting  scutage, 
whereby  the  barons  agreed  to  a  money  payment  in  lieu  of 
their  obligation  to  provide  him  with  men-at-arms  in  time  of 
war.  He  now  set  to  work  with  the  help  of  his  legal  advisers 
to  undermine  their  power  in  their  own  domains.  The 
manorial  courts  of  the  barons  had  been  partly  shorn  of  their 
powers  by  the  judicial  reforms  of  Henry  I.  Henry  II  sought 
to  carry  this  work  further  by  developing  the  curia  regis  or 
Royal  Court  of  Justice.  That  court  had  originally  been  the 
court  of  the  king’s  barons,  corresponding  to  the  court  of 
his  tenants,  which  every  feudal  lord  possessed.  From  this 
central  court,  Henry  sent  out  justices  on  circuit,  and  so  brought 
the  king’s  law  into  touch  with  all  parts  of  the  kingdom, 
breaking  open  the  enclosed  spheres  of  influence  of  the  manorial 
courts  by  emptying  them  of  their  more  serious  cases,  and 
it  may  be  that  at  the  start  these  justices  dispensed  a  law  which 
was  cheaper,  more  expeditious,  and  more  expert  than  that 
of  the  manor  and  scarcely  different  in  intention.  It  was  by 
such  means  that  the  idea  was  gradually  promoted  that  the 
king’s  law  and  the  king’s  right  took  precedence  over  those 
of  other  individuals  and  groups,  and  the  people  were  induced 
to  acquiesce  in  a  change,  the  ultimate  consequences  of  which 
they  were  unable  to  foresee. 

At  first  sight  these  changes  have  all  the  appearance  of 
a  change  in  the  right  direction.  Feudalism  rested  on  local 
1  Cf.  Ashley’s  Economic  History,  vol.  i.  part  i.  p.  131. 


Roman  Law  in  England 


75 


isolation,  on  the  severance  of  kingdom  from  kingdom,  and 
barony  from  barony,  on  the  distinction  of  race  and  blood, 
on  local  military  independence,  on  an  allegiance  determined 
by  accidents  of  birth  and  social  position.  It  might  appear, 
therefore,  that  now,  when  the  circumstances  which  had  created 
feudalism  were  disappearing,  when  the  spread  of  currency 
was  undermining  its  integrity,  that  the  new  developments 
that  aimed  at  breaking  down  this  isolation,  destroyed  the 
military  independence  of  the  barons,  took  the  administration 
of  the  law  out  of  the  hands  of  men  without  a  legal  training, 
and  placed  it  in  the  hands  of  experts,  who  brought  order  and 
uniformity  into  it,  was  a  change  in  the  right  direction.  And 
so  it  might  have  been,  had  not  the  justices  whose  decisions 
were  to  leave  a  lasting  impression  on  the  law  of  the  land  been 
men  who  despised  the  common  and  traditional  law.  Their 
minds  had  been  trained  upon  Roman  Law,  and  they  set  to 
work  to  remodel  the  common  law  in  such  a  way  as  to  undermine 
the  basis  of  Mediaeval  institutions  and  popular  liberty.  In 
the  long  run,  much  the  same  kind  of  thing  happened  in  England 
as  in  Germany,  though  the  English  lawyers  were  perhaps 
more  subtle  in  their  methods.  They  did  not  advocate  a 
revival  of  the  Justinian  Code  ;  perhaps  because  the  fiction 
of  continuity  could  not  very  well  be  applied  in  this  country, 
but  they  introduced  the  changes  piecemeal.  Bracton,  the 
great  jurist  of  the  time,  upon  whose  writings  our  knowledge 
of  the  period  is  largely  based,  sought  to  accomplish  this  end 
by  fitting  English  facts  into  a  framework  of  Roman  Law.1 
Such  is  the  English  Common  Law. 

The  contrast  between  the  old  Mediaeval  Law  and  the  new 
Anglicized  Roman  Law  is  most  strikingly  illustrated  by  the 
new  legal  attitude  towards  the  question  of  private  property, 
and  in  the  treatment  of  the  law  of  persons.  A  suspicion  gains 
ground  that  a  consequence  of  the  introduction  of  Roman 
ideas  of  law  was  an  attempt  in  the  thirteenth  century  to 
transform  feudalism  into  slavery.  Nothing  was  sacred  to 
the  lawyers  that  could  not  be  supported  by  documentary 
evidence.  The  rights  and  customs  of  the  people  they  looked 
upon  as  nominal  and  revocable.  “  In  Anglo-Saxon  times, 
the  predecessor  of  the  villain,  the  ceorl,  was  not  a  slave  at 

1  Cf.  Vinogradoff,  p.  97. 


76  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


all,  but  had  a  standing  against  his  lord  in  the  court  of  law.”1 
But  the  Roman  Code  made  no  provision  for  the  rights  of 
different  social  classes.  It  recognized  only  autocrats  and 
slaves.  Hence  it  was  that,  when  confronted  with  Feudalism 
an  institution  in  which  the  lords  were  not  autocrats  but 
functionaries,  and  the  villains  not  slaves  but  dependents, 
the  lawyers  were  at  a  loss  as  to  how  to  apply  the  Roman 
rule.  They  appear  to  have  vacillated  for  some  time,  but 
“  after  some  contradictory  decisions  the  court  ended  by 
applying  strictly  the  rule  that  villains  have  no  claim 
against  their  lords  and  that  in  law  what  is  held  by  the 
villain  is  owned  by  the  lord.”2  Bract  on  follows  Azo  as 
to  the  very  important  generalization  “  all  men  are  born 
either  free  or  slaves.”  3  There  is  no  getting  round  these 
facts.  That  a  decision  on  this  issue  had  to  be  made 
suggests  that,  prior  to  the  introduction  of  Roman  ideas  of 
law,  the  right  of  the  villain  to  appeal  against  his  lord  was 
presumed,  and  that  the  courts  wavered  some  time  between 
contradictory  opinions,  because  things  were  happening  behind 
the  scenes  which  had  to  be  taken  into  consideration,  or,  in 
other  words,  that  their  final  decision  was  governed  by  con¬ 
siderations  of  political  expediency.  We  saw  that,  by  means 
of  scutage,  the  military  power  of  the  barons  had  been 
destroyed.  The  Royal  Courts  of  Justice  were  now  engaged 
in  the  task  of  destroying  their  judicial  power,  and  it  is  not 
unreasonable  to  suppose  that  a  time  came  when  the  lords 
began  to  ask  the  question,  “  Where  do  we  come  in  ?  ”  under 
the  new  order  the  king  and  his  lawyers  were  seeking  to 
establish.  It  would  become  daily  clearer  to  the  lawyers  that 
if  the  development  of  the  Royal  Courts  of  Justice  was  to 
continue  and  to  expand,  the  lords  would  have  to  be  brought 
to  terms.  If  they  were  to  acquiesce  in  the  change,  their 
status  would  have  to  be  guaranteed  in  some  new  way.  And  I 
suggest  that  a  bargain  was  struck.  The  Crown  was  to  be 
allowed  to  absorb  the  judicial  functions,  and  the  lords  were 
to  be  allowed  to  enslave  their  serfs. 

But  the  change  could  not  stop  here.  If  the  lord  was  to 
be  given  absolute  control  over  his  serfs,  he  must  be  made 
absolute  owner  of  the  land,  for  the  spread  of  currency  into 

1  C.  Vinogradoff,  p.  ioo.  3  Ibid.,  p.  ioo.  3  Ibid.,  p.  98. 


Roman  Law  in  England 


77 


rural  areas  by  substituting  money  payments  for  payment  in 
kind  was  disintegrating  the  old  feudal  order.  Hence  it  came 
about  that  the  lawyers  revived  the  Roman  individualistic 
theory  of  property.  The  lord  was  to  be  acknowledged  no 
longer  as  a  functionary  who  held  his  land  conditionally  upon 
the  fulfilment  of  certain  specific  duties  towards  his  serfs  and 
tenants,  but  was  to  be  recognized  as  the  absolute  owner  of 
the  land,  while,  moreover,  he  was  to  be  given  certain  privileges 
over  the  common  lands.  The  foundation  of  the  law  on  this 
subject  is  in  the  “  Statute  of  Merton  ”  of  1235,  which  laid 
down  that  lords  might  “  make  their  profit  ”  of  their  “  wastes, 
woods  and  pastures,”  in  spite  of  the  complaints  of  “  knights 
and  freeholders  ”  whom  they  had  “  infeoffed  of  small  tenements 
in  their  manors,”  so  long  as  these  feoffees  had  a  sufficient 
pasture  so  much  as  belongeth  to  their  tenements.” 1  This  was 
the  thin  end  of  the  wedge.  Like  all  the  law  on  the  subject, 
it  is  delightfully  and  intentionally  vague,  in  order  that  the 
lawyers  might  twist  and  twine  its  meaning,  and  the  lords 
bully  their  dependents  as  best  suited  their  ends.  The  question, 
of  course,  arises  how  much  is  “  sufficient  pasture.”  This  is 
obviously  a  matter  of  opinion,  and  as  the  burden  of  proof 
lay  upon  the  tenant,  who,  if  he  objected  to  enclosures,  had 
to  prove  that  he  could  not  find  sufficient  pasture,  the  statute 
in  effect  granted  the  lords  the  right  to  enclose  the  common 
lands  to  their  hearts’  content,  and  allowed  the  peasantry 
no  redress  against  injustice,  as  the  courts  were  in  conspiracy 
against  them. 

Before  the  lawyers  came  along  with  their  Roman  Law, 
Feudalism  was  a  defensible  if  not  an  ideal  form  of  organization. 
But  the  lawyers  poisoned  the  whole  system.  They  became 
the  stewards  of  the  lords  and  instructed  their  noble  patrons 
“  in  all  the  legal  methods  of  taming  down  the  peasants  so  that 
they  might  not  shoot  up  too  high.”  They  put  them  up  to 
all  the  little  dodges  by  means  of  which  the  common  lands 
might  be  enclosed,  and  how,  by  attacking  things  piecemeal, 
they  might  encroach  upon  the  communal  rights  of  the  people. 
They  were  behind  the  evictions  which  the  new  commercial 
lords  undertook,  in  order  that  tillage  might  be  turned  into 

1  An  Introduction  to  English  Economic  History  and  Theory,  by  W.  J. 
Ashley,  vol.  i.  part  ii.  p.  271. 


78  A  GuildsmarCs  Interpretation  of  History 


I 


pasture,  when  sheep-farming  became  so  profitable.  By 
such  means  funds  were  secured  to  feed  the  ever-increasing 
taste  of  the  upper  classes  for  luxury  and  display,  and  by 
such  means  the  unrest  was  created  which  led  to  the  Peasants’ 
Revolt  of  1381,  when  the  lawyers  got  all  they  were  looking 
for.  Every  one  of  them  who  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  rebels 
was  put  to  death;  “  not  until  all  these  were  killed  would  the 
land  enjoy  its  old  freedom  again  ”  the  peasants  shouted  as 
they  firedr  the  houses  of  the  stewards  and  flung  the  records 
of  the  manor  courts  into  the  flames.  When  they  entered 
London  they  set  ablaze  the  new  inn  of  the  lawyers  at  the  Temple 
together  with  the  stately  palace  of  John  of  Gaunt  and  the 
houses  of  the  foreign  merchants,  against  whom  also  they  had 
grievances.  Whoever  may  have  had  doubts  as  to  the  source  of 
the  mischief,  the  peasants,  who  were  led  by  the  friars,  had  their 
minds  made  up.  It  was  not  a  rising  against  Feudalism  as 
it  had  existed  a  couple  of  centuries  earlier,  but  a  rising  against 
a  corrupted  Feudalism  in  general  and  the  lawyers  in  particular, 
whom  the  peasants  rightly  believed  had  corrupted  it  as  they 
believed  they  were  corrupting  the  mind  of  the  young  sovereign. 
For  one  object  of  their  rising  was  to  free  him  from  evil  counsel¬ 
lors  whom  they  believed  abused  his  youth. 

The  Peasants’  Revolt  is  the  turning-point  in  English  history, 
as  similar  revolts  on  the  Continent  in  the  latter  half  of  the 
fourteenth  century  are  the  turning-point  in  the  history  of 
Continental  nations.  To  ascribe  the  break-up  of  Mediaeval 
society  to  the  economic  changes  which  followed  the  Black 
Death  is  to  draw  a  smoke-screen  across  history.  It  is  to 
attribute  to  a  general  and  indefinable  cause  social  phenomena 
which  can  be  most  explicitly  traced  to  a  very  definite  and 
particular  one,  since  the  economic  confusion  which  followed 
the  Black  Death  would  not  have  come  about  had  not  the 
communal  relations  which  held  society  together  a  couple 
of  centuries  earlier  been  disintegrated  by  the  machinations 
of  the  lawyers.  The  peasants,  therefore,  in  seeking  the 
destruction  of  the  lawyers  put  their  finger  rightly  on  the 
primary  cause  of  the  dissolution  of  the  old  Mediaeval  order. 
To  this  extent  their  instincts  were  true.  But  unfortunately 
while  they  were  right  as  to  the  cause  of  the  evils  from  which 
they  were  suffering  they  were  wrong  in  regard  to  their  general 


Roman  Law  in  England 


79 


economic  policy.  Quite  apart  from  the  lawyers,  the  old 
feudal  order  based  upon  payment  in  kind  was  being  disinte¬ 
grated  by  the  spread  of  currency  into  rural  areas  which  was 
substituting  money  payments  for  services,  and  it  was  urgent, 
if  economic  difficulties  were  not  to  follow  upon  this  change, 
that  currency  should  be  regulated  in  rural  areas  by  Guilds. 
But  this  aspect  of  the  problem  they  appear  to  have  over¬ 
looked  entirely,  for  instead  of  demanding  charters  from  their 
sovereign  for  organization  of  agricultural  Guilds  along  with 
their  demand  for  the  abolition  of  serfdom,  they  demanded 
liberty  to  buy  and  sell.  This  mistake  was  a  fatal  one,  since 
if  they  had  demanded  charters  for  Guilds  the  whole  course  of 
English  history  would  have  been  different.  For  then  the 
Guilds  would  have  covered  the  whole  area  of  production,  and 
as  capitalism  would  not  then  have  been  able  to  get  a  foothold, 
the  position  of  the  Guilds  in  the  towns  would  not  have  been 
undermined  in  the  sixteenth  century  by  the  pressure  of  the 
competition  of  capitalist  industry.  After  a  time  such  Agricul¬ 
tural  Guilds  would  have  been  sufficiently  wealthy  to  buy 
out  the  landlords  in  the  same  way  that  the  plutocracy  of 
Rome  came  to  dispossess  the  landed  aristocracy,  or  they  would 
have  acquired  sufficient  power  to  confiscate  the  lands  if 
this  policy  had  recommended  itself.  But  this  great  oppor¬ 
tunity  of  recovering  the  land  of  England  for  the  people  was 
lost  because  the  peasants  at  the  time  saw  only  their  immediate 
interests.  Profiting  by  a  rising  market,  they  did  not  under¬ 
stand  the  dangers  to  which  an  unregulated  currency  exposed 
them.  But  when  at  last  in  the  sixteenth  century  they  did 
become  cognizant  of  the  evil,  it  was  too  late.  The  Guilds 
in  the  town  had  been  defeated  and  capitalism  was  already 
triumphant.  It  is  strange  how  history  repeats  itself.  As 
in  Rome  we  saw  that  an  unregulated  currency  gave  rise  to 
Roman  Law,  so  in  the  Middle  Ages  we  see  the  revival  of  Roman 
Law  being  accompanied  by  the  spread  of  an  unregulated 
currency.  There  is  a  definite  connection  between  these  two 
phenomena.  The  Roman  theory  postulating  an  individual¬ 
istic  society  was  not  only  opposed  to  all  organizations  within 
the  State,  because  in  the  time  of  the  Republic  such  organiza¬ 
tions  had  been  used  as  a  basis  of  conspiracy  but  to  the  mainten¬ 
ance  of  the  Just  Price  as  well,  for  a  right  to  buy  in  the  cheapest 


80  A  Giiildsmari s  Interpretation  of  History 


market  and  sell  in  the  dearest  was  admitted  in  the  Justinian 
Code.  There  can  therefore  be  no  doubt  whatsoever  that  the 
influence  of  the  lawyers  would  be  opposed  to  the  spread  of 
Guild  organization  in  rural  areas. 

In  spite  of  the  popular  feeling  against  the  lawyers  which 
the  Peasants’  Revolt  evinced,  the  legal  profession  steadily 
strengthened  its  grip  on  the  government  of  the  country. 
By  the  reign  of  Elizabeth  the  lawyers  had  not  only  concentrated 
all  judicial  functions  into  their  own  hands,  but  Parliament 
itself  had  become  an  assembly  of  lawyers.  Bacon,  though 
himself  a  lawyer,  had  a  great  contempt  for  the  profession. 
No  amount  of  legal  knowledge,  he  believed,  would  make  a 
statesman  or  equip  a  man  to  deal  with  matters  of  high  policy. 
“  The  wisdom  of  a  lawyer,”  he  said,  “  is  one,  that  of  a  lawmaker 
another.  Judges  ought  to  remember  that  their  office  is  to 
interpret  law,  and  not  to  make  law  or  give  law.”  And  so 
he  viewed  with  alarm  the  growing  influence  of  Parliament, 
as  it  implied  the  growing  influence  of  lawyers.  “  Without 
the  lawyers,”  he  said,  “  the  country  gentlemen  would  be 
leaderless.”  He  had  no  objection  to  Parliament  so  long  as 
they  did  not  attempt  to  control  the  Government,  but  he 
clearly  foresaw  the  paralysis  that  would  overtake  State  policy 
if  ever  the  lawyers  got  the  upper  hand.  For  though  later 
the  Revolution  taught  men  that  lawyers  prefer  some  form 
of  monarchy,  it  is  a  nominal  or  limited  monarchy  in  which 
they  believe.  Their  ambition  is  not  to  occupy  the  throne  but 
to  be  the  power  behind  the  throne,  and  it  is  this  ambition 
that  makes  them  at  once  so  powerful  and  so  irresponsible, 
which  enables  them  at  once  to  commit  injustice  and  to  visit 
others  with  the  consequences. 

As  against  the  idea  of  a  sovereign  assembly,  Bacon  exalted 
the  Crown.  The  royal  prerogative  represented  in  his  mind 
the  case  of  enterprise  and  initiative  as  against  pedantry  and 
routine.  But  monarchy  in  his  day  was  beginning  to  find  its 
position  difficult  in  the  new  order  which  it  had  been  one  of 
the  chief  means  of  promoting.  Monarchy,  as  I  insisted 
earlier,  was  essentially  a  Mediaeval  institution.  The  monarchs 
were  the  highest  of  temporal  authorities,  but  they  were 
subject  to  the  spiritual  authority  of  the  Popes.  Monarchs 
did  not  care  very  much  about  this.  They  were  restive  under 


Roman  Law  in  England 


81 


it  even  when  they  acquiesced.  They  wanted  their  rule  to 
be  absolute,  and  it  was  this  that  led  them  to  give  support  to 
the  Roman  lawyers,  who  made  law  depend  upon  the  monarchs’ 
will  and  not  ultimately  upon  a  higher  and  external  authority. 
After  quarrelling  with  the  Popes  for  centuries  the  monarchs 
succeeded  in  countries  where  Protestanism  had  triumphed 
in  emancipating  themselves  from  the  control  of  the  Popes. 
But  things  did  not  then  work  out  exactly  as  they  expected.. 
When  the  Popes  were  gone  the  religious  sanction  was  gone, 
and  monarchs  began  to  find  that  instead  of  contending  against 
the  Popes  they  had  to  contend  against  their  own  peoples, 
who  now  began  to  question  their  authority.  Hence  the 
doctrine  of  the  Divine  Right  of  Kings  by  which  James  I 
sought  to  rehabilitate  monarchy.  He  wrote  two  treatises 
on  the  subject  in  which  he  expounded  his  views.  In  one 
of  these,  A  Kings  Duty  in  his  Office ,  he  distinguished  the 
lawful  ruler  from  the  tyrant  by  the  fact  that  the  former 
feels  responsibility  towards  God,  while  the  latter  does  not. 
Hence  the  lawful  ruler  claims  unconditional  obedience  from 
his  subjects  and  was  answerable  to  God  alone,  but  the  people 
owe  no  allegiance  to  the  tyrant.  But  in  the  other  one, 
Basilicon  Doron,  which  was  prepared  for  his  eldest  son  Henry 
and  was  not  written  for  publication,  he  maintains  that  a 
king  was  to  be  obeyed  whether  he  ruled  justly  or  unjustly. 
In  the  first  place  because  in  abolishing  monarchy  the  State, 
instead  of  relieving,  would  double  its  distress,  for  a  king 
can  never  be  so  monstrously  vicious  that  he  will  not  generally 
favour  justice  and  maintain  order;  and  in  the  next,  because 
a  wicked  king  is  sent  by  God  as  a  plague  on  people’s  sins, 
and  it  is  unlawful  to  shake  off  the  burden  which  God  has 
laid  upon  them.  “  Patience,  earnest  prayer  and  amendment 
of  their  lives  are  the  only  lawful  means  to  move  God  to  relieve 
them  of  that  heavy  curse.”  1  It  was  essentially  the  philosophy 
of  Protestantism  and  Roman  Law  which  treats  all  rights 
as  subjective  as  opposed  to  the  doctrine  of  objective  rights 
postulated  by  Mediae valism. 2 

So  far  from  settling  matters,  the  system  of  government 

1  See  Political  Thought  in  England  from  Bacon  to  Halifax,  by  G.  P. 
Gooch,  pp.  7-22. 

*  See  Authority,  Liberty  and  Function,  by  Ramiro  de  Maeztu. 

6 


82  A  Guildsmari’s  Interpretation  of  History 


by  prerogative  as  preached  and  practised  by  James  only 
made  matters  worse.  It  brought  him  into  collision  with 
the  lawyers  and  the  Puritans,  who  shattered  the  power  of 
the  Stuarts.  The  opposition  which  James  had  to  face  came 
from  the  lawyers,  and  particularly  from  Edward  Coke,  who 
was  their  leader.  He  had  served  successively  under  Elizabeth 
as  Speaker  and  Attorney-General,  and  in  these  positions 
he  appeared  mainly  as  a  defender  of  the  Crown  against  the 
dangers  of  conspiracy.  But  on  being  appointed  Chief  Justice 
of  Common  Pleas  his  attitude  towards  the  king  changed, 
and  he  now  began  to  play  the  role  of  champion  of  the  courts 
against  the  encroachments  of  the  king.  He  was  the  greatest 
legal  scholar  of  his  age,  and  being  a  conservative  by  tempera¬ 
ment,  he  came  to  exalt  the  common  law  above  king  and 
Parliament.  It  was  the  sovereign,  and  supreme  over  both 
of  them.  His  position  was  altogether  too  paradoxical 
to  become  a  constitutional  theory,  for  the  rule  of  the  law, 
according  to  his  interpretation,  would  mean  not  merely  the 
rule  of  the  lawyers  but  finally  the  rule  of  the  pedant  and 
antiquarian.  To  Coke,  law  was  an  end  in  itself,  and  he 
believed  just  as  much  in  the  Divine  Right  of  Law  as  James 
believed  in  the  Divine  Right  of  Kings,  and  so  a  collision 
became  inevitable.  Through  the  patronage  of  kings,  the 
Roman  lawyers  had  been  gradually  raised  to  positions  of 
highest  authority  in  the  land.  Now  the  time  came  when 
the  law,  which  was  mainly  their  own  creation,  was  to  be  used 
as  a  weapon  with  which  to  challenge  the  royal  authority. 

Though  Coke’s  idea  of  the  sovereignty  of  law  as  an 
esoteric  science  interpreted  by  professional  jurists  died  with 
its  author,  it  is  customary  to  regard  him  as  one  of  the  founders 
of  constitutional  government.  The  contest  between  King 
and  Parliament  continued  for  nearly  a  century  and  was  only 
finally  brought  to  an  end  by  deposing  the  last  of  the  Stuarts, 
which  was  followed  by  the  enactment  of  the  Bill  of  Rights 
passed  in  1689  which  put  an  end  for  ever  in  England  to  all 
claim  to  Divine  Right  or  hereditary  right  independent  of 
the  law.  It  was,  among  other  things,  a  great  victory  for  the 
lawyers.  Henceforth  an  English  monarch  became  just  as 
much  the  creature  of  an  Act  of  Parliament  as  any  member 
of  the  Civil  Service.  Parliament  also  secured  absolute 


Roman  Law  in  '  England 


83 


control  over  taxation  and  the  Army,  which  incidentally 
owed  its  existence  as  a  permanent  institution  to  the  fact 
that  after  the  Revolution  the  Army  of  Cromwell  refused  to 
be  disbanded,  regarding  itself  as  the  defender  of  the  liberties 
of  the  people  against  landlords,  royalists  and  Catholics. 
With  Parliament  supreme  the  triumph  of  the  lawyers  was 
assured.  Little  by  little,  as  their  ally,  Capitalism,  whom  they 
had  succeeded  in  emancipating  from  the  “  fetters  of  the 
Middle  Ages/’  undermined  in  the  economic  world  what 
was  left  of  the  old  social  order,  the  control  of  government 
passed  into  their  hands  until,  in  our  day,  they  are  supreme. 
But  what  kind  of  government  is  it  ? 


Parliaments  built  of  paper 
And  the  soft  swords  of  gold, 
That  twist  like  a  waxen  taper 
In  the  weak  aggressor’s  hold. 


Such  is  Mr.  Chesterton’s  description  of  a  government  of 
lawyers.  Experience  is  teaching  us  that  Bacon  was  right 
in  holding  that  no  amount  of  legal  knowledge  will  equip  a 
man  for  the  high  policy  of  State.  Roman  Law,  being  divorced 
from  morals,  tends  to  corrupt  the  minds,  where  it  does  not 
corrupt  the  morals  of  those  who  study  it.  And  it  comes 
about  this  way  :  without  a  base  in  morality,  law  inevitably 
becomes  increasingly  complicated,  for  its  framework  can 
only  be  maintained  amid  such  circumstances  by  defining 
precisely  every  detail.  Instead,  therefore,  of  the  mind 
of  the  student  being  directed  towards  a  comprehension 
of  the  broad,  basic  facts  of  life,  it  is  directed  towards  the 
study  of  subtle  controversies  and  hair-splitting  differences 
which  befog  the  intelligence.  As  success  in  the  legal  pro¬ 
fession  follows  preoccupation  with  such  trivialities,  a  govern¬ 
ment  composed  of  lawyers  is  necessarily  a  weak  government 
that  waits  upon  events  because  it  is  incapable  of  decision 
on  vital  issues.  But  while  on  the  one  hand  Roman  Law 
reduces  its  devotees  to  impotence  so  far  as  constructive 
statesmanship  is  concerned,  on  the  other  the  very  complexity 
of  the  law  paralyses  the  efforts  of  men  without  legal  training 
to  secure  reform.  Hence  it  is,  while  parties  have  changed 
and  battles  have  been  fought  over  burning  political  issues. 


84  A  Guildsmart s  Interpretation  of  History 


nothing  can  get  done.  And  because  reform  becomes  im¬ 
possible,  anarchy  grows  apace,  which  in  turn  encourages 
the  growth  of  legalism  in  vain  attempts  to  put  a  boundary 
to  the  growth  of  disorder.  It  is  thus  the  modern  world 
has  entered  a  vicious  circle  in  which  anarchy  begets  legalism 
and  legalism  begets  anarchy  and  from  which  there  can 
be  no  escape  so  long  as  the  principles  of  Roman  Law  remain 
unchallenged. 

Considering  the  iniquity  that  has  been  associated  with 
Roman  Law  almost  from  the  days  of  its  revival,  it  is  extra¬ 
ordinary  that  it  should  still  command  respect.  But  what 
is  more  extraordinary  still  is  that  while  it  succeeded  in 
corrupting  Mediaeval  society  it  has  not  only  succeeded  in 
escaping  censure  itself,  but  has  managed  to  transfer  the 
odium  which  belongs  to  itself  to  the  institutions  which  it 
was  the  means  of  corrupting.  The  Church,  the  Monarchy, 
Feudalism  and  the  Guilds  each  in  turn  suffered  at  its  hands. 
Each  and  all  of  them  in  turn  have  been  condemned  as 
intolerable  tyrannies  because  each  of  them  in  some  measure 
stood  for  the  communal  idea  of  society,  and  as  such  at  different 
times  have  offered  resistance  to  the  growth  of  a  system  of 
law  whose  aim  it  has  been  to  dissolve  all  personal  and  human 
ties  and  to  replace  them  by  the  impersonal  activity  of  the 
State.  If  Capitalism  to-day  is  our  active  enemy,  let  us 
clearly  recognize  that  Roman  Law  is  the  power  behind  the 
throne. 


r 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  CONSPIRACY  AGAINST  MEDIEVALISM 

An  appreciation  of  the  part  which  Roman  Law  played  in 
the  corruption  of  Mediaeval  society  and  in  the  creation  of 
modern  thought  and  civilization  should  go  a  long  way 
towards  the  removal  of  the  prejudice  which  prevails  to-day 
against  most  things  Mediaeval,  and  which  distorts  out  of 
its  proper  perspective  everything  which  then  existed.  This 
prejudice  has  many  roots,  and  therefore  it  becomes  necessary, 
ere  proceeding  with  our  story,  to  seek  the  removal  of  the 
prejudice  by  explaining  its  origin.  I  hope  to  show  that 
though  to-day  this  prejudice  may  be  little  more  than  a 
misunderstanding,  it  did  not  begin  as  such,  but  as  a  conspiracy. 

We  need  not  go  far  to  find  evidence  in  support  of  this 
contention.  Consider,  for  one  moment,  the  utterly  irre¬ 
sponsible  way  in  which  the  word  Mediaeval  is  thrown  about 
in  the  daily  Press.  Among  a  certain  class  of  writers  it  is 
the  custom  to  designate  as  Mediaeval  anything  which  they 
do  not  understand  or  of  which  they  do  not  approve,  quite 
regardless  of  the  issue  as  to  whether  it  actually  existed  in 
the  Middle  Ages  or  not.  During  the  war,  for  instance, 
how  often  did  we  read  of  Mediaeval  Junkerdom,  notwithstand¬ 
ing  the  fact  that  the  Middle  Ages  was  the  age  of  chivalry, 
and  that,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  spirit  of  German  militarism 
approximates  very  nearly  to  that  of  the  military  capitalism 
of  Ancient  Rome.  For  the  Romans,  like  the  Germans, 
did  not  hesitate  to  destroy  the  towns  and  industries  of  their 
rivals.  It  was,  as  I  have  already  pointed  out,  for  commercial 
reasons  that  they  burnt  Carthage  and  Corinth,  and  caused 
the  vineyards  and  olive-groves  of  Gaul  to  be  destroyed, 
in  order  to  avoid  a  damaging  competition  with  the  rich 
Roman  landlords.  Or,  again,  when  anything  goes  wrong 

85 


J 


86  A  Guildsmarts  Interpretation  of  History 


in  a  government  department,  for  reasons  not  apparent 
on  the  surface,  the  shortcoming  will  be  described  as  Mediaeval 
regardless  of  the  fact  that  bureaucracy  is  a  peculiarly  Roman 
institution  and  scarcely  existed  in  the  Middle  Ages.  There 
is  no  need  to  multiply  instances,  as  they  are  to  be  met  with 
in  the  Press  daily.  But  the  result  is  tragic.  An  all-pervading 
prejudice  is  created,  which  militates  against  clear  thinking 
on  social  and  political  questions,  for  a  prejudice  against 
Mediae valism  is  a  prejudice  against  all  normal  forms  of 
social  organization  ;  it  is  a  prejudice  which  may  spell  Bol¬ 
shevism  in  the  days  to  come  ;  for,  after  all,  Bolshevism 
is  itself  nothing  more  than  modern  prejudices  and  historical 
falsehoods  carried  to  their  logical  conclusions. 

Now,  it  stands  to  reason  that  this  gross  solecism  is  not 
without  a  cause.  Nobody  on  the  Press  ever  speaks  of  Rome 
or  Greece  in  this  irresponsible  way,  and  the  question  needs 
to  be  answered  :  Why  is  the  Middle  Ages  the  only  period 
in  history  singled  out  for  such  thoughtless  misrepresentation  ? 
The  answer  is,  that  at  one  time  this  indiscriminate  mud- 
slinging  had  a  motive  behind  it — a  motive,  however,  that 
has  since  disappeared.  Cobbett,  I  think,  got  at  the  bottom 
of  it  when,  a  hundred  years  ago,  he  pointed  out  that  Protestant 
historians  had  wilfully  misrepresented  the  Middle  Ages 
because  there  were  so  many  people  living  on  the  plunder  of 
the  monasteries  and  the  Guilds,  and  consequently  interested 
in  maintaining  a  prejudice  against  the  Middle  Ages,  as  the 
easiest  way  of  covering  their  tracks.  It  was  not  for  nothing 
that  Cobbett’s  History  of  the  Reformation  1  was  burnt  by  the 
public  hangman.  It  was  burnt  because  it  was  more  than 
a  history — because  it  exposed  a  conspiracy.  But  the  pre¬ 
judice  exists  ;  it  has  other  roots  which  require  to  be  attacked. 

We  need  not  pause  to  consider  how  the  prejudices  of 
freethinkers  have  militated  against  an  understanding  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  as  the  free  thinking  of  freethinkers  is  no  longer 
above  suspicion.  In  so  far  as  their  prejudices  are  in  these 
days  a  force  to  be  reckoned  with,  it  is  as  a  part  of  the  Marxian 
or  Bolshevik  gospel.  The  rise  to  popularity  of  the  Marxian 
creed  has  given  the  anti-Mediaeval  prejudice  a  new  lease 

1  A  History  of  the  Protestant  Reformation  in  England  and  Ireland,  by 
William  Cobbett.  (Reprint  by  Washbourne  &  Co.,  is.  6d.) 


The  Conspiracy  against  Medievalism 


87 


of  life,  by  refusing  in  the  first  place  to  admit  that  any  but 
material  forces  have  ever  played  more  than  a  secondary 
part  in  the  shaping  of  history,  and  what  naturally  follows 
from  it,  distorting  or  ignoring  such  facts  as  do  not  happen 
to  fit  in  with  the  materialist  conception.  How  gross  are  the 
prejudices  which  have  been  impressed  upon  the  minds  of 
the  workers  may  be  understood  by  any  one  who  will  take  the 
trouble  to  read  such  a  book  as  that  produced  by  one  of 
the  Neo-Marxians,  A  Worker  Looks  at  History,  by  Mr.  Mark 
Starr.  It  is  an  important  book  because  of  the  wide  circulation 
it  has  amongst  the  workers.  Popular  misconceptions  and 
prejudices  are  exaggerated.  In  the  chapter  entitled  “  The 
Renaissance  from  the  Mediaeval  Night  ”  the  author,  after 
referring  to  the  schools  of  Alexandria,  says  :  “  Christianity 
proscribed  philosophy,  abolished  the  schools,  and  plunged 
the  world  into  an  abyss  of  darkness  from  which  it  only 
emerged  after  twelve  hundred  years.”  Mr.  Starr  is  indignant 
at  this.  But  it  never  occurs  to  him  to  enquire  what  these 
schools  taught ;  and  this  is  important.  He  assumes  that 
they  taught  what  he  admires  in  the  Pagan  philosophers, 
for  whom  I  have  as  much  regard  as  has  Mr.  Starr.  But 
these  schools  of  the  Neo-Plat onists  were  degenerate  institu¬ 
tions.  They  taught  everything  that  Mr.  Starr  would  hate. 
Their  teaching  was  eclectic — a  blending  of  Christian  and 
Platonic  ideas  with  Oriental  mysticism.  They  believed  in 
magic.  Their  reasoning  was  audacious  and  ingenious, 
but  it  was  intellectual  slush  without  any  definite  form  or 
structure.  Above  all,  it  encouraged  a  detachment  from  the 
practical  affairs  of  life,  and  thus  became  an  obstruction 
to  real  enlightenment.  It  was  well  that  these  schools  were 
suppressed  ;  they  needed  suppressing,  for  no  good  can  come 
of  such  misdirection  of  intellectual  activities,  and  I  doubt 
not  had  Mr.  Starr  been  then  alive  he  would  have  risen  in 
his  wrath  against  their  unreality.  The  Early  Church  was 
opposed  to  these  degenerate  intellectuals,  because,  while 
the  Church  desired  to  establish  the  Kingdom  of  God  upon 
Earth,  they  were  content  for  it  to  remain  in  heaven.  But 
Mr.  Starr  has  been  so  prejudiced  against  Mediae valism  that 
he  attributes  to  the  Church  all  the  vices  which  it  sought  to 
suppress. 


88  A  Guild-smarts  Interpretation  of  History 


Though  the  Early  Church  closed  the  schools  of  the  Neo- 
Platonists,  it  did  not  suppress  philosophy.  On  the  contrary, 
Greek  culture  was  preserved  at  Constantinople,  while  much 
of  Greek  philosophy  was  absorbed  in  Christian  theology. 
Before  the  close  of  the  New  Testament  Canon,  Greek 
philosophy  had  begun  to  colour  the  expression  of  Christian 
doctrine  ;  in  the  hands  of  the  Fathers  of  the  Church  it  entered 
into  its  very  substance.  The  logos  of  Plato  reappears  as  the 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  which,  incidentally,  is  not  an  ex¬ 
planation  of  the  universe,  but  “  a  fence  to  guard  a  mystery.”1 
It  reappears,  however,  not  as  an  intellectual  abstraction, 
but  as  a  concrete  reality,  and,  as  such,  possesses  a  dynamic 
power  capable  of  changing  the  world.  It  was  this  burning 
desire  to  change  the  world  which  made  the  Early  Christians 
so  impatient  with  the  Neo-Plat onists,  who  made  speculation 
an  excuse  for  inaction,  as  it  makes  the  Neo-Marxians  to-day 
rightly  impatient  with  a  certain  type  of  Socialist  intellectual. 
Moreover,  it  was  this  insistence  upon  practical  activity 
which  made  Christianity  so  dogmatic  in  its  theology. 
Marxians  at  any  rate  ought  to  realize  that  strenuous  activity 
must  rest  upon  dogmas.  On  the  other  hand,  the  weakness 
of  Pagan  philosophy  was  that  it  was  powerless  to  influence 
life.  “  Cicero,  the  well-paid  advocate  of  the  publicani 
and  bankers,  whom  he  frequently  calls  in  the  most  idyllic 
style  ornamentum  civitatis,  firmarnentum  rei  publicce  flos 
equitum  while  philosophizing  on  virtue,  despoiled  with 
violence  the  inhabitants  of  the  province  he  administered, 
realizing,  salvis  legibus,  two  million  two  hundred  thousand 
sestercia  in  less  than  two  months.  Honest  Brutus  invested 
his  capital  at  Cyprus  at  48  per  cent.  ;  Verres  in  Sicily 
at  24  per  cent.  Much  later,  when  the  economic  dissolu¬ 
tion  of  the  Republic  had  led  to  the  establishing  of  the 
Empire,  Seneca,  who,  in  his  philosophical  writings,  preached 
contempt  of  riches,  despoiled  Britain  by  his  usury.”  2 

While  the  prejudice  against  Mediae valism  doubtless  had 
its  origin  in  malice  and  forethought,  it  is  encouraged  by  the 
fallacious  division  of  Mediaeval  history  into  the  Middle  Ages 

1  Essays  in  Orthodoxy,  by  Oliver  Chase  Quick. 

2  A.  Deloume,  Les  Manieurs  d' Argent  d  Rome,  quoted  in  Nitti’s  Catholic 
Socialism , 


The  Conspiracy  against  Medievalism 


89 


and  the  Dark  Ages.  By  means  of  this  artificial  and  arbitrary 
division  the  popular  mind  has  been  led  to  suppose  that 
mankind  was  plunged  into  darkness  and  ignorance  after  the 
decline  of  Roman  civilization,  while  it  is  generally  inferred 
that  this  was  due  to  the  spread  of  Christianity,  which  it 
is  supposed  exhibited  a  spirit  hostile  to  learning  and  enlight¬ 
enment  rather  than  to  the  inroads  of  the  barbarian  tribes. 
A  grosser  travesty  of  historic  truth  was  never  perpetrated. 
But  the  travesty  is  made  plausible  by  the  custom  which  many 
historians  have  of  detailing  the  history  of  a  particular 
geographical  area,  instead  of  making  history  continuous 
with  the  traditions  of  thought  and  action,  the  geographical 
centres  of  which  change  from  time  to  time.  Treating  the 
history  of  Western  Europe  according  to  the  former  method, 
the  period  of  Roman  occupation  is  followed  by  one  of  barbar¬ 
ism,  in  which  almost  every  trace  of  civilization  disappears  for 
a  time,  and  no  doubt  the  people  who  dwelt  in  this  part  of 
Europe  did  live  through  a  period  of  darkness.  That,  however, 
was  the  case  with  the  Western  Empire  only.  The  Eastern 
Empire  was  never  overrun  by  the  barbarians.  On  the 
contrary,  its  capital,  Constantinople,  maintained  during 
all  this  period  a  high  state  of  civilization,  and  was  the  artistic 
and  cultural  centre  of  the  world.  While  the  barbarian  hordes 
were  overrunning  the  Western  Empire,  the  Eastern  Church 
preserved  the  traditions  of  Greek  culture,  which,  as  order 
became  restored  in  the  West,  gradually  filtered  through 
Venice  until  the  fall  of  Constantinople  in  1453.  The  subse¬ 
quent  emigration  of  Greek  scholars  and  artists  to  Italy 
removed  the  last  barrier  between  the  culture  of  Eastern 
and  Western  Europe. 

It  was  at  Constantinople,  during  the  sixth  century, 
that  the  Code  of  Justinian  was  made.  It  is  painful  for  me 
to  have  to  record  this  fact,  seeing  that  it  led,  unfortunately, 
to  the  revival  of  Roman  Law,  and  it  is  mentioned  here 
not  as  a  recommendation,  but  merely  as  testimony  to  the 
existence  of  intellectual  activity  during  the  so-called  Dark 
Ages.  The  task  of  extracting  a  code  from  the  six  camel¬ 
loads  of  law-book  certainly  testifies  to  the  existence  of  learning. 
Moreover,  it  was  during  this  period  that  the  Byzantine  school 
of  architecture  flourished.  The  reputation  of  the  cathedral 


90  A  Guildsmari’s  Interpretation  of  History 

church  of  Santa  Sophia,  built  in  the  sixth  century,  was  so 
great  that  the  twelfth-century  William  of  Malmesbury  knew 
of  it  “  as  surpassing  every  other  edifice  in  the  world.’ ’  Of 
this  architecture  Professor  Lethaby  writes  : — 

“  The  debt  of  universal  architecture  to  the  early  Christian 
and  Byzantine  schools  of  builders  is  very  great.  They 
evolved  the  church  types  ;  they  carried  far  the  exploration 
of  domical  construction,  and  made  wonderful  balanced 
compositions  of  vaults  and  domes  over  complex  plans. 
They  formed  the  belfry  from  the  Pharos  and  fortification 
towers.  We  owe  to  them  the  idea  of  the  vaulted  basilican 
church,  which,  spreading  westward  over  Europe,  made  our 
great  vaulted  cathedrals  possible.  They  entirely  recast 
the  secondary  forms  of  architecture  ;  the  column  was  taught 
to  carry  the  arch,  the  capital  was  reconsidered  as  a  bearing 
block  and  became  a  feature  of  extraordinary  beauty.  The 
art  of  building  was  made  free  from  formulae,  and  architecture 
became  an  adventure  in  building  once  more.  We  owe 
to  them  a  new  type  of  moulding,  the  germ  of  the  Gothic 
system,  by  the  introduction  of  the  roll-moulding  and  their 
application  of  it  to  ‘  strings  ’  and  the  margins  of  doors. 
The  first  arch  known  to  me  which  has  a  series  of  roll-mouldings 
is  in  the  palace  of  Inshatta.  The  tendency  to  cast  windows 
into  groups,  the  ultimate  source  of  tracery  and  the  foiling 
of  arches  is  to  be  mentioned.  We  owe  to  these  Christian 
artists  the  introduction  of  delightfully  fresh  ornamentation, 
crisp  foliage,  and  interlaces,  and  the  whole  scheme  of  Christian 
iconography.”  1 

This  is  no  small  achievement.  Only  an  age  as  indifferent 
to  the  claims  of  architecture  as  our  own  could  underrate 
its  magnitude.  To  the  average  historian,  however,  this 
period  of  history  is  a  blank,  because  he  lacks  the  kind  of 
knowledge  and  sympathy  necessary  to  assess  its  achievements 
at  their  proper  value.  To  his  mind,  enlightenment  and 
criticism  are  synonymous ;  and,  finding  no  criticism,  he 
assumes  there  was  no  enlightenment,  not  understanding  that 
criticism  is  the  mark  of  reflective  rather  than  of  creative 
epochs.  For,  though  at  times  they  appear  contemporaneously, 
they  have  different  roots,  and  the  critical  spirit  soon  destroys 

1  Architecture,  by  Professor  W.  R.  Lethaby. 


The  Conspiracy  against  Medievalism 


91 


the  creative,  as  we  shall  see  when  we  come  to  consider  the 
Renaissance.  How  false  such  standards  of  judgment  are  may 
be  understood  by  comparing  the  Dark  Ages  with  our  own.  In 
those  days  there  was  plenty  of  architecture,  but  little,  if  any, 
architectural  literature.  To-day  the  volume  of  architectural 
literature  and  criticism  is  prodigious,  but  there  is  precious 
little  architecture. 

While  the  traditions  of  culture  all  through  this  period 
were  preserved  and  developed  in  the  Eastern  Church  with 
its  centre  at  Constantinople,  the  task  which  fell  to  the 
Western,  or  Roman,  Church  was  of  a  different  order.  Upon 
it  was  thrust  the  task  of  civilizing  the  barbarian  races  of  the 
West  which  had  overthrown  the  Roman  Empire,  and  it 
is  to  the  credit  of  the  Early  Church  that  it  succeeded  where 
the  Romans  had  failed.  Success  was  achieved  through 
different  methods.  Roman  civilization  had  been  imposed 
by  violence  and  maintained  by  compulsion  :  it  was  always 
an  exotic  affair,  and  it  fell  to  pieces  when  the  force  of  the 
barbarians  became  at  last  more  powerful  than  that  of  the 
Roman  Empire.  The  success  of  Christianity  is  attributable 
to  the  fact  that  it  effected  a  change  in  the  spirit  of  the  peoples. 
This  great  achievement  was  the  work  of  the  early  Monastic 
Orders,  whose  missionary  zeal  was  destined  to  spread 
Christianity  throughout  Europe. 

The  early  Christian  monks  had  been  characterized  by 
a  decided  Oriental  tendency  to  self-contemplation  and 
abstraction,  and  in  their  missionary  enterprises  their  inter¬ 
course  with  the  rude  populations  was  limited  to  instructing 
them  in  the  homilies  and  creeds  of  Christ.  Augustine  and 
his  forty  companions,  who  were  sent  forth  by  Gregory  the 
Great  to  convert  Britain  (a.d.  596),  “  acted  on  a  very 

different  principle,  for  in  addition  to  the  orthodox  weapons 
of  attack  and  persuasion  which  they  employed  against 
their  opponents,  they  made  use  of  other,  but  equally  powerful, 
methods  of  subjugation,  by  teaching  the  people  many  useful 
arts  that  were  alike  beneficial  to  their  bodies  and  their 
minds.  As  soon  as  they  settled  in  Kent,  and  had  begun 
to  spread  themselves  towards  the  north  and  west,  they 
built  barns  and  sheds  for  their  cattle  side  by  side  with  their 
newly  erected  churches,  and  opened  schools  in  the  immediate 


92  A  Guildsmaris  Interpretation  of  History 


neighbourhood  of  the  house  of  God,  where  the  youth  of 
the  nominally  converted  population  were  now  for  the  first 
time  instructed  in  reading,  and  in  the  formulae  of  their  faith 
and  where  those  who  were  intended  for  a  monastic  life 
or  for  the  priesthood,  received  the  more  advanced  instruction 
necessary  to  their  earnest  calling.’ ’ 1 

We  read  that  the  Benedictines  of  Abingdon,  in  Berkshire, 
were  required  by  their  canonized  founder  to  perform  a 
daily  portion  of  field  labour,  in  addition  to  the  prescribed 
services  of  the  Church.  “  In  their  mode  of  cultivating 
the  soil  they  followed  the  practices  adopted  in  the  warmer 
and  more  systematically  tilled  lands  of  the  south.  They 
soon  engaged  the  services  of  the  natives  in  the  vicinity  and 
repaid  their  labours  with  a  portion  of  the  fruits  of  their  toil, 
and  in  proportion  as  the  woods  and  thickets  were  cleared, 
and  the  swamps  and  morasses  disappeared,  the  soil  yielded 
a  more  plentiful  return  ;  while  the  land,  being  leased  or 
sub-let,  became  the  means  of  placing  the  monastery,  which 
was,  in  fact,  the  central  point  of  the  entire  system,  in  the 
position  of  a  rich  proprietor.  From  such  centres  as  these 
the  beams  of  a  new  and  hopeful  life  radiated  in  every 
direction.”  3 

“  The  requirements  of  the  monks,  and  the  instruction 
they  were  able  to  impart  around  them,  soon  led  to  the 
establishment  in  their  immediate  neighbourhood  of  the  first 
settlement  of  artificers  and  retail  dealers,  while  the  excess 
of  their  crops,  flocks  and  herds,  gave  rise  to  the  first 
markets,  which  were,  as  a  rule,  originally  held  before  the 
gate  of  the  abbey  church.  Thus  hamlets  and  towns  were 
formed,  which  became  the  centres  of  trade  and  general 
intercourse,  and  thus  originated  the  market  tolls,  and  the 
jurisdiction  of  these  spiritual  lords.  The  beneficial  influences 
of  the  English  monasteries  in  all  departments  of  education 
and  mental  culture  expanded  still  further,  even  in  the  early 
times  of  the  Anglo-Saxons,  for  they  had  already  then  become 
conspicuous  for  the  proficiency  which  many  of  their  members 
had  attained  in  painting  and  music,  sculpture  and  architecture. 
The  study  of  the  sciences,  which  had  been  greatly  advanced 
through  the  exertions  of  Bede,  was  the  means  of  introducing 

1  Pictures  of  Old  England,  by  Dr.  Reinhold  Pauli,  chap.  ii.  3  Ibid. 


The  Conspiracy  against  Medicevalism 


93 


one  of  his  most  celebrated  followers,  Alcuin  of  York,  to  the 
court  of  Charlemagne,  for  the  purpose  of  establishing  schools 
and  learning  in  the  German  Empire.  And  although  every 
monastery  did  not  contribute  in  an  equal  degree  to  all  these  ' 

beneficial  results,  all  aided  to  the  best  of  their  power  and 
opportunities  in  bringing  about  that  special  state  of  cultiva¬ 
tion  which  characterised  the  Middle  Ages.”  1 

So  much  for  the  Dark  Ages  and  the  malicious  libel  which 
insinuates  that  the  Mediaeval  world  was  opposed  to  learning. 

So  far  from  such  insinuations  being  true,  every  Monastic 
Order,  for  whatever  purpose  originally  founded,  ended  in 
becoming  a  learned  order.  It  was  the  recognition  of  this 
fact  that  led  St.  Francis,  who  was  a  genuinely  practical 
man,  to  insist  that  his  followers  should  not  become  learned 
or  seek  their  pleasures  in  books,  “  for  I  am  afraid,”  he  says, 

“  that  the  doctors  will  be  the  destruction  of  my  vineyard.” 

And  here  is  found  the  paradox  of  the  situation  :  so  long  as 
learning  was  in  the  hands  of  men  who  valued  it  as  such 
it  made  little  headway,  but  when  at  length  the  new  impulse 
did  come,  it  came  in  no  small  measure  from  the  Franciscans, 
from  the  men  who  had  the  courage  to  renounce  learning 
and  to  lead  a  life  of  poverty,  for  in  the  course  of  time  the 
Franciscans  became  learned,  as  had  done  the  other  orders. 

Thus  we  see  that  the  central  idea  of  Christianity — to  renounce 
the  world  in  order  to  conquer  it — bears  fruit  not  only  in 
the  moral  but  in  the  intellectual  universe. 

Sufficient  has  now  been  said  to  refute  the  charge  that  the 
Mediaeval  Church  was  opposed  to  learning.  The  case  of 
the  Franciscans  in  decrying  learning  is  the  only  one  known 
to  me,  and  their  action,  as  we  shall  see  in  a  later  chapter, 
turned  out  to  be  a  blessing  in  disguise.  What  the  Mediaeval 
Church  was  against  was  heresy,  which  was  often  associated 
with  learning,  but  the  suppression  of  heresy  is  a  thing  funda¬ 
mentally  different  from  opposition  to  learning,  and  there 
is  nothing  peculiarly  Mediaeval  about  it.  The  Greeks  con¬ 
demned  Socrates  to  death  for  seeking  to  discredit  the  gods, 
while  Plato  himself  came  finally  to  the  conclusion  that  in 
his  ideal  State  to  doubt  the  gods  would  be  punishable  by 
death.  The  Roman  Emperors  persecuted  the  Christians 

i  Ibid. 


A 


94  A  Guildsmari’s  Interpretation  of  History 


for  refusing  observance  to  the  gods,  Marcus  Aurelius  himself 
being  no  exception  to  this  rule,  while  we  ourselves  show 
equal  readiness  to  persecute  heresy  against  the  State,  as 
in  the  case  of  the  pacifist  conscientious  objectors.  And 
so  it  will  always  be  when  great  issues  are  at  stake.  A  people 
with  a  firm  grip  on  fundamental  truth  attacks  heresy  at 
its  roots  in  ideas.  A  people  like  ourselves,  that  has  lost 
its  grip  on  primary  truth,  waits  until  it  begins  to  influence 
action,  but  once  the  heresy  is  recognized,  all  peoples  in  all 
times  have  sought  its  suppression. 

Before  going  further,  let  us  be  clear  in  our  minds  as  to 
what  we  mean  by  heresy.  At  different  times  it  has  meant 
different  things,  but,  in  general,  it  might  be  defined  as  the 
advocacy  of  ideas  which,  at  a  given  time  in  a  given  place, 
are  considered  by  those  in  power  as  subversive  to  the  social 
order,  and  the  instinct  of  self-preservation  has  impelled  all 
peoples  in  all  times  to  suppress  such  ideas.  In  the  Mediae¬ 
val  period  such  persecutions  were  associated  with  religion, 
because  in  that  era  all  ideas,  social  and  political,  were  discussed 
under  a  theological  aspect.  The  position  is  simple.  If  it 
be  affirmed  that  every  social  system  rests  finally  upon  the 
common  acceptance  of  certain  beliefs,  any  attempt  to  alter 
beliefs  will  tend,  therefore,  in  due  course  to  affect  the  social 
system.  Plato  carried  this  idea  much  farther  than  the 
question  of  religious  beliefs.  In  the  Republic  he  says : 
“  The  introduction  of  a  new  style  of  music  must  be  shunned 
as  imperilling  the  whole  State  ;  since  styles  of  music  are 
never  disturbed  without  affecting  the  most  important  political 
institutions.”  “  The  new  style,”  he  continues,  “  gradually 
gaining  a  lodgment,  quietly  insinuates  itself  into  manners 
and  customs  ;  and  from  these  it  issues  in  greater  force,  and 
makes  its  way  into  mutual  compacts ;  and  from  making  com¬ 
pacts  it  goes  on  to  attack  laws  and  constitutions,  displaying 
the  utmost  impudence  until  it  ends  by  overturning  everything, 
both  in  public  and  in  private.”  Plato  here  recognizes  that 
if  communal  relations  in  society  are  to  be  maintained  and 
men  are  to  share  common  life,  it  can  be  only  on  the  assumption 
that  they  share  common  ideas  and  tastes.  From  this  it 
follows  that  the  nearer  a  society  approaches  the  communal 
ideal  the  more  it  will  insist  upon  unity  of  faith,  because 


The  Conspiracy  against  Medicevalism 


95 


the  more  conscious  it  will  be  of  ideas  that  are  subversive 
of  the  social  order. 

The  heretic  was  the  man  who  challenged  this  community 
of  beliefs,  and  it  was  for  this  reason  that  he  was  looked  upon 
as  a  traitor  to  society.  In  the  Middle  Ages  a  man  was  not 
originally  interfered  with  because  he  held  unorthodox  views. 
He  was  interfered  with  because  he  sought  by  every  means 
in  his  power  to  spread  such  views  among  the  people,  and 
he  met  with  much  stronger  opposition  from  the  public 
themselves  than  from  ecclesiastic  authority.  The  ideas 
for  which  the  heretics  were  persecuted  were  individualist 
notions  disguised  in  a  communist  form.  The  heretics  had 
no  “  sense  of  the  large  proportion  of  things.”  They  were 
not  catholic-minded  in  the  widest  meaning  of  the  term. 
They  had  no  sense  of  reality,  and  if  they  had  been  allowed 
to  have  their  own  way  they  would  have  precipitated  social 
chaos  by  preaching  impossible  ideals. 

The  position  will  be  better  understood  if  we  translate  the 
problem  into  the  terms  of  the  present  day.  Suppose  the 
Socialists  succeeded  in  abolishing  capitalism  and  established 
their  ideal  State,  and  then  suppose  a  man  came  along  preach¬ 
ing  individualist  ideas,  attempting  to  bring  back  capitalism 
in  some  underhand  way  by  the  popularization  of  a  theory 
the  implications  of  which  the  average  man  did  not  under¬ 
stand.  At  first,  I  imagine,  he  would  not  be  interfered  with. 
If  he  began  to  make  converts,  however,  a  time  would  come 
when  Socialists  would  either  have  to  consent  to  the  over¬ 
throw  of  their  society  in  the  interests  of  capitalism  or  take 
measures  against  him.  If  ever  they  were  faced  with  this 
dilemma  there  can  be  little  doubt  how  they  would  act.  The 
Medievalist  attitude  towards  the  heretic  was  precisely  what 
the  Socialist  attitude  would  be  towards  such  a  man.  The 
controversies  over  the  Manichean,  Arian,  and  Nestorian 
heresies  raged  for  centuries,  and  no  action  was  taken  against 
them  until  it  became  clear  what  were  the  issues  involved, 
when  the  Church,  through  its  Councils,  made  definite  pro¬ 
nouncements  and  the  heresies  were  suppressed.  They  were 
suppressed  because  men  had  instinctively  come  to  feel  that 
they  imperilled  not  only  the  unity  of  the  Faith  but  the 
unity  of  the  social  order  as  well. 


i 


06  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


Historical  evidence  suggests  that  this  is  the  right  avenue 
of  approach,  since  the  persecution  of  heretics  began  with 
secular  and  not  with  ecclesiastical  authority.  During  the 
first  three  centuries  of  the  Early  Church  there  was  no  persecu¬ 
tion  of  heretics.  All  the  influential  ecclesiastics  then  agreed 
that  the  civil  arm  might  be  employed  to  deal  with  them, 
by  prohibiting  assemblies  and  in  other  ways  preventing 
them  from  spreading  their  views,  but  that  the  death  penalty 
was  contrary  to  the  spirit  of  the  Gospel.  For  centuries 
such  was  the  ecclesiastical  attitude,  in  both  theory  and 
practice.  This  attitude  did  not  recommend  itself  to  the 
successors  of  Constantine,  however,  who,  continuing  in  the 
persuasion  of  the  Roman  Emperors  that  the  first  concern 
of  the  imperial  authority  was  the  protection  of  religion, 
persecuted  men  for  not  being  Christians,  in  the  same  spirit 
that  their  predecessors  had  persecuted  men  because  they 
were  Christians.  At  a  later  date — somewhere  about  the 
year  1000 — when  Manicheans  expelled  from  Bulgaria  spread 
themselves  over  Italy,  Spain,  France,  and  Germany,  the 
people,  thinking  that  the  clergy  were  supine  in  the  suppression 
of  heresy,  took  the  law  into  their  own  hands  and  publicly 
burnt  the  heretics.  Thus  it  is  recorded  that  in  1114,  when 
the  Bishop  of  Soissons,  who  had  sundry  heretics  in  durance 
in  his  episcopal  city,  went  to  Beauvais  to  ask  advice  of  the 
bishops  assembled  there  for  a  synod,  the  “  believing  folk,” 
fearing  the  habitual  soft-heartedness  of  the  ecclesiastics, 
stormed  the  prison,  took  the  accused  out  of  the  town  and 
burnt  them.  Such  incidents,  which  suggest  the  Lynch 
law  of  America,  were  not  uncommon  in  the  early  Middle 
Ages,  when  the  persecution  of  heretics  was  due  to  the  fanatical 
outbursts  of  an  over-zealous  populace  or  to  the  arbitrary 
action  of  individual  rulers,  but  never  to  ecclesiastical 
authority. 

It  was  not  until  the  latter  half  of  the  twelfth  century 
that  the  attitude  of  the  Church  changed,  owing  to  the  rise 
of  the  Catharists,  better  known  to  history  as  the  Albigenses, 
so  called  from  the  town  of  Albi  (in  South-west  France), 
where  a  council  was  held  against  them.  The  Albigenses 
taught  a  creed  that  carried  the  Manichean  heresy  to  its 
logical  conclusion.  The  Manicheans  had  identified  good 


The  Conspiracy  against  Medicevalism 


97 


and  evil  with  spirit  and  matter.  According  to  them,  spirit 
was  good  and  matter  was  evil.  Hence  their  contempt  of 
the  body,  and  hence,  too,  the  Christian  dogma  of  the  Resurrec¬ 
tion  of  the  Body,  whereby  it  was  sought  to  combat  the  evils 
consequent  upon  such  a  perverted  attitude  towards  life 
by  affirming  “  that  in  any  final  consummation  the  bodily 
life  of  man  must  find  a  place  no  less  than  the  spirituaL,,  1 
The  Manichean  heresy  had  been  taught  by  the  Gnostic 
sects  in  the  early  days  of  Christianity.  It  had  been  suppressed 
but  had  reappeared  again  from  time  to  time  in  its  old  form. 
Now,  however,  it  was  to  receive  a  new  development.  If 
spirit  were  good  and  matter  evil,  if  the  bodily  life  of  man 
on  earth  were  to  be  regarded  as  a  form  of  penance  to  which 
man  was  condemned  because  of  evil  deeds  in  former  lives, 
then  the  sooner  he  could  by  self-effacement  and  rigid  discipline 
pay  the  penalty  of  his  misdeeds  (that  is,  to  work  off  the 
bad  karma,  as  Theosophists  would  say)  the  better  it  would 
be  for  him.  Hence  it  was  that  the  ascetic  rigorists  among 
the  Albigenses  preached  a  doctrine  which  was  tantamount 
to  the  advocacy  of  suicide — they  sought  to  escape  this  life 
by  slow  starvation.  Although  such  extremists  were  at  all 
times  few  in  number,  they  were  the  objects  of  an  adoring 
reverence  from  the  people,  which  led  to  the  rapid  spread 
of  such  teachings  in  Germany,  France,  and  Spain.  About 
the  same  time,  and  mixed  up  with  the  Albigenses  to  some 
extent,  there  occurred  an  outburst  of  witchcraft,  magic, 
and  sorcery — the  old  religion,  as  the  Italians  call  it — and 
the  Church  was  at  last  roused  to  action.  Terribly  afraid 
of  this  new  spirit,  which  she  considered  menaced  not  only 
her  own  existence  but  the  very  foundations  of  society  as  well, 
the  Church  in  the  end  shrank  from  no  cruelty  that  she  might 
be  rid  of  it  for  ever.  The  action  of  the  Church  was  rather 
the  result  of  panic  produced  by  suspicions  in  the  minds 
of  normal  men  than  an  outburst  of  primitive  savagery. 
In  the  South  of  France  the  Albigenses  were  very  powerful, 
for  not  only  were  they  very  zealous,  but  the  nobility,  for 
reasons  of  their  own,  supported  them,  a  circumstance  which 
imparted  to  the  Albigenses  the  aspect  of  a  powerful  political 
party,  in  addition  to  that  of  an  heretical  sect.  They  were 
1  Essays  in  Orthodoxy,  by  Oliver  Chase  Quick. 

7 


98  A  Guildsman  s  Interpretation  of  History 


condemned  at  various  Councils,  including  the  Lateran  Council 
of  1179,  but  these  condemnations  merely  increased  the 
opposition  of  the  Albigenses.  Pope  Innocent  III,  whose 
juristic  mind  identified  heresy  with  high  treason,  resolved 
to  extirpate  the  heresy,  and  in  1198  he  sent  two  Cistercian 
monks  to  try  pacific  measures.  These  failing,  he  began  his 
serious  and  deliberate  policy  of  extermination.  He  ordered 
a  crusade  to  be  preached  against  the  Albigenses.  Indulgences 
were  promised  to  all  who  took  part  in  this  holy  war,  and 
soon  afterwards  Simon  de  Montfort  (father  of  the  founder 
of  the  English  parliament)  led  a  crusade  which  was  carried 
on  until  ended  politically  by  the  Treaty  of  Paris  in  1229. 
The  Albigenses,  as  a  political  party,  were  now  suppressed, 
and  an  Inquisition  was  left  behind  to  uproot  any  sporadic 
growth  of  heresy.  The  Inquisition  then  established  was  a 
secular  and  temporary  institution.  The  definite  participa¬ 
tion  of  the  Church  in  the  administration  of  the  Inquisition 
dates  from  1231,  when  Gregory  IX  placed  it  under  ecclesias¬ 
tical  control.  Exact  information  as  to  the  motives  which 
led  him  to  take  this  action  is  lacking,  but  the  hypothesis 
is  advanced  by  the  writer  of  the  article  on  the  Inquisition 
in  the  Catholic  Encyclopedia  that  its  introduction  might 
be  due  to  the  anxiety  of  the  Pope  to  forestall  the  encroach¬ 
ments  of  the  Emperor  Frederick  II  in  the  strictly  ecclesiastical 
province  of  doctrine.  This  hypothesis  I  am  disposed  to 
accept,  for  it  makes  intelligible  much  that  would  otherwise 
be  obscure,  and,  if  it  be  correct,  means  that  the  establishment 
of  the  Inquisition  is  finally  to  be  attributed  to  the  influence 
of  Roman  Law. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  the  Commentators  won  the 
favour  of  the  Emperors  by  declaring  that,  as  the  successors 
of  the  Roman  Emperors,  their  will  was  law,  and  that  the 
Hohenstaufen  family  gladly  accepted  this  decision  as  a 
justification  of  their  desire  for  absolutism.  Frederick  II, 
following  in  the  footsteps  of  his  father,  Frederick  Barbarossa, 
sought  by  every  means  to  make  his  power  supreme  over 
Church  and  State.  Bearing  this  in  mind,  it  is  not  unreason¬ 
able  to  suppose  that  the  rigorous  legislation  that  he  enacted 
against  heretics,  and  which  he  unscrupulously  made  use  of 
to  remove  any  who  stood  in  the  path  of  his  ambitions,  was 


■HPfT  '  ' 

The  Conspiracy  against  Medicevalism  99 

not  to  be  attributed  to  his  affected  eagerness  for  the  purity 
of  the  Faith,  but  because  he  saw  that  the  power  that  persecuted 
heresy  became,  ipso  facto ,  the  final  authority  in  matters  of 
faith,  and  that  with  such  a  weapon  in  his  hands  he  would 
be  in  a  position  to  encroach  gradually  upon  the  ecclesiastical 
province  of  doctrine,  so  that  finally  Church  doctrine  would 
come  to  be  as  much  dependent  upon  the  will  of  the  Emperor 
as  the  Civil  Law.  It  is  suggested  that  Gregory  perceived 
whither  Frederick’s  policy  was  leading,  and  that  he  resolved 
to  resist  his  encroachments  in  the  only  way  that  was  open 
to  him.  He  could  not  have  prevented  the  persecution  of 
heretics  even  had  he  so  desired,  for,  as  we  have  seen,  their 
persecution  was  rooted  in  popular  feeling.  What  he  could 
do,  however,  was,  by  regularizing  the  procedure,  to  prevent 
Frederick  from  abusing  his  power,  and  Gregory  accordingly 
instituted  a  tribunal  of  ecclesiastics  that  would  pronounce 
judgment  on  the  guilt  of  those  accused  of  heresy.  This 
action  was  immediately  of  service  to  the  heretics,  for  the 
regular  procedure  thus  introduced  did  much  to  abrogate 
the  arbitrariness,  passion,  and  injustice  of  the  civil  courts 
of  the  Emperor. 

The  Church,  then,  undertook  the  task  of  deciding  who 
was  and  who  was  not  a  heretic,  and  this  was  as  far  as  inter¬ 
ference  went.  What  was  to  be  done  with  one  found  guilty 
of  heresy  was,  as  heretofore,  left  to  the  civil  authorities  to 
decide.  Torture  had  been  used  in  civil  courts  as  a  means 
of  extracting  evidence,  but  its  use  was  for  long  prohibited  in 
the  ecclesiastical  courts.  Its  introduction  into  the  latter 
was  due  to  Pope  Clement  V,  who  formulated  regulations 
for  its  use,  but  it  was  to  be  resorted  to  only  under  very 
exceptional  circumstances.  Why  the  Pope  should  have 
been  led  to  make  this  decision — what  especial  factors  should 
have  impelled  him  to  take  a  step  so  fatal — is  not  evident, 
but  we  do  know  that  torture  was  most  cruelly  used  when 
the  Inquisitors  were  exposed  to  the  pressure  of  civil  authorities, 
and  that  in  Spain,  where  the  Inquisitors  were  appointed 
by  the  Crown,  the  Inquisition,  under  the  presidency  of 
Torquemada  (1482-94)  distinguished  itself  by  its  startling 
and  revolting  cruelty.  Here  again,  however,  as  in  the  case 
of  the  Emperor  Frederick  II,  it  was  used  as  an  instrument 


100  A  Guilds  man's  Interpretation  of  History 


to  further  the  political  ambitions  of  the  Kings  of  Spain, 
who  profited  by  the  confiscation  of  the  property  of  the 
heretics,  which  was  not  inconsiderable,  remembering  that 
several  hundred  thousand  Jews  at  this  time  quitted  Spain 
to  avoid  persecution.  Pope  Sixtus  IV  made  several  attempts 
to  stop  the  deadly  work,  but  was  obliged  through  pressure 
from  Spain  to  deny  the  right  of  appeal  to  himself.  The 
situation  had  then  got  quite  out  of  hand.  The  persecution 
of  heretics  ceased  to  be  a  popular  movement,  and  became 
generally  detested.  Its  cruel  punishments,  secret  proceedings, 
and  prying  methods  caused  universal  alarm,  and  led  not 
only  to  uprisings  of  the  people  against  a  tyranny  which 
was  regarded  by  many  as  “  worse  than  death  ”  but,  by  invest¬ 
ing  heretics  with  the  crown  of  martyrdom,  defeated  its 
own  ends  and  brought  orthodox  Christianity  into  discredit. 
After  the  period  of  the  Reformation  the  Inquisition  relaxed 
its  severity,  but  it  lingered  on  until  it  was  finally  abolished 
in  Spain  in  1835. 

The  passions  that  are  aroused  by  the  very  name  of  the 
Inquisition  make  it  difficult  to  judge  its  work,  while  an 
impartial  history  of  it  has  yet  to  be  written.  From  its 
history,  as  from  that  of  the  persecution  of  heresy,  there 
clearly  emerges  the  fact  that  religious  persecution  was  due 
in  the  first  place  to  the  initiative  of  the  civil  authority, 
that  at  a  later  date  it  became  a  popular  movement,  and 
that  for  centuries  the  ecclesiastics  resisted  the  demands 
of  both  the  civil  authorities  and  the  people  for  persecution. 
Furthermore,  when  the  attitude  of  ecclesiastics  changed  it 
was  owing  to  the  heresy  of  the  Catharists,  which  threatened 
at  the  same  time  not  only  the  existence  of  the  Church  but 
the  very  foundations  of  society  ;  and  that  when  at  last  the 
Papacy  did  move  in  the  matter  it  was  because  of  the  danger 
that  worse  things  might  happen  if  the  persecution  of  heretics 
was  to  continue  independent  of  ecclesiastical  direction. 
Looking  at  the  dilemma  which  presented  itself  to  Gregory  IX, 
it  is  extremely  difficult  to  say  which  was  the  less 
momentous  of  the  two  evils  between  which  he  had  to  choose 
— whether  he  was  to  allow  ambitious  Emperors  to  persecute 
heretics  as  a  means  of  furthering  their  Imperial  desire  to 
control  the  Church,  or  whether,  by  regularizing  the  procedure, 


The  Conspiracy  against  Medievalism  101 


the  Church  might  mitigate  the  evils  of  lay  prosecution, 
even  though  she  incurred  the  odium  of  tyranny  as  a  conse¬ 
quence.  But  of  this  we  may  be  certain,  that  the  tyranny 
was  not  only  foreign  to  the  spirit  of  Christianity  and  ecclesi¬ 
astical  authority,  but  it  was  directly  attributable  to  the 
spread  of  Roman  Law,  which,  awakening  in  the  hearts  of 
Emperors  and  Kings  the  desire  to  subordinate  religion  to 
State  authorit}?,  as  had  been  the  case  in  Rome,  awakened 
also  the  Pagan  spirit  of  religious  persecution.  The  contrary 
hypothesis  generally  held,  that  the  religious  persecution 
is  due  to  the  intolerance  of  ecclesiastical  authority,  is  unten¬ 
able,  not  only  because  the  facts  of  history  flatly  contradict 
it,  but  because  as  compulsion  is  emphatically  an  attribute 
of  the  State,  the  ecclesiastical  authority  is  finally  powerless 
to  use  it  to  further  its  ends  apart  from  the  co-operation  of 
the  State.  And  the  best  proof  I  can  bring  in  support  of 
this  contention  is  that  the  Church  was  powerless  to  suppress 
Roman  Law — the  heresy  that  laid  the  foundations  of  material¬ 
ism  and  undermined  the  position  not  only  of  the  Church  but 
of  Christianity  itself — because  it  was  supported  by  the  secular 
authorities. 


CHAPTER  VII 


MEDIEVALISM  AND  SCIENCE 

Everybody  nowadays  is  willing  to  grant  that  the  Middle 
Ages  was  great  in  architecture  ;  though  I  would  remind 
admirers  of  Gothic  that  this  appreciation  is  quite  a  recent 
thing.  The  right  to  admire  Gothic  had  to  be  fought  for. 
Less  than  a  hundred  years  ago  Sir  Walter  Scott  thought 
it  necessary  to  apologize  to  his  readers  for  his  love  of  it. 
This  change  of  opinion  as  to  the  merits  of  Gothic  is  due  to 
the  powerful  advocacy  of  Ruskin  and  to  the  activities  of 
the  architects  of  the  Gothic  Revival.  We  are  now  beginning 
to  realize  that  the  Medievalists  knew  something  about 
economics  and  social  organization.  But  few  people  realize 
that  not  only  was  the  basis  of  science  laid  in  the  Middle 
Ages  but  that  its  methods  remain  Medieval  to  this  day, 
for  in  this  respect  science  remained  unaffected  by  the  influence 
of  the  Renaissance. 

That  so  much  ignorance  should  obtain  on  this  subject  is 
due  to  the  conspiracy  about  things  Medieval  which  Cobbett 
was  the  first  to  expose.  The  popular  notion  is  that  during 
the  “  long  Medieval  night/’  when  the  Church  held  sway  over 
men’s  minds,  education  was  hampered  ;  Papal  Bulls  forbade 
the  study  of  chemistry  and  practical  anatomy,  as  dissection  of 
the  human  body  was  regarded  as  an  heretical  experiment  ; 
all  reasoning  was  deductive,  and  such  experimentalists  as 
there  were  wasted  their  time  in  the  search  for  the  philosopher’s 
stone  which  was  to  transmute  base  metal  into  gold,  or  for 
the  elixir  of  life  ;  whilst  the  bulk  of  the  people  were  kept 
in  a  state  of  “  grovelling  ignorance  and  superstition.”  All 
advance  was  made  by  scholars  who  were  persecuted  by  the 
Church  in  order  to  keep  the  people  in  subjection  to  its  tyranny, 

and  the  results  of  their  labours  have  enabled  science  to 

102 


Medievalism  and  Science 


103 


confer  untold  benefits  upon  civilization.  But  I  will  not 
press  this  latter  point.  Poison  gas,  liquid  fire,  and  bombs 
from  aeroplanes,  have  brought  a  doubt  into  many  minds 
as  to  the  truly  beneficial  intentions  of  science,  and  there 
are  many  in  these  days  who  incline  to  the  view  that  the 
“  Mediaeval  prejudice,”  so  called,  was  not  altogether  unjustified 
after  all. 

In  these  circumstances  it  is  somewhat  distressing  to 
find  that  the  Mediae valists  had  no  such  prejudice.  It  is 
possible  they  might  have  had,  could  they  have  clearly  foreseen 
all  the  horrors  which  science  has  let  loose  upon  the  world. 
But  they  were  not  sufficiently  far-sighted,  and  as  a  matter 
of  fact  they  applied  themselves  to  the  study  of  science  with 
great  avidity.  It  will  clear  the  air  if  we  begin  by  bringing 
evidence  to  refute  these  popularly  accepted  notions.  The 
supposed  Papal  decree  forbidding  the  study  of  chemistry 
turns  out  on  examination  to  be  nothing  of  the  kind.  The 
decretal  of  John  XXII  (1316-34)  did  not  aim  at  the  chemist, 
but  at  the  abuse  of  chemistry  by  the  alchemist,  who  incident¬ 
ally  was  not  the  fool  he  is  popularly  imagined  to  be,  but  a 
trickster  who  cast  counterfeit  money  and  a  fraudent  company 
promoter  who  got  money  out  of  people  by  getting  them  to 
subscribe  to  schemes  for  extracting  gold  from  sea-water,1 
and  it  was  on  this  account  that  he  was  condemned. 
Legitimate  science,  as  we  shall  see  later,  was  encouraged 
and  subsidized  by  the  Popes.  Meanwhile  it  may  be  observed 
that  while  the  Medievalists  distinguished  between  chemistry 
and  alchemy,  no  such  distinction  obtains  to-day.  Our 
alchemists  do  not  waste  their  time  in  attempting  to  make 
gold  out  of  silver  ;  they  have  found  a  much  more  profitable 
business  in  making  wool  out  of  cotton,  silk  out  of  wood, 
and  leather  out  of  paper ;  while  these  abuses  are  not 
in  these  days  forbidden  by  Papal  Bulls  but  are  taught 
and  encouraged  at  our  technical  universities. 

Now  let  us  turn  to  the  supposed  prohibition  of  dissection 
which  it  is  popularly  taught  was  regarded  as  an  heretical 
experiment  because  it  came  into  collision  with  the  Christian 
dogma  of  the  Resurrection  of  the  Body.  There  may,  of 

1  The  text  of  this  decree  is  to  be  found  in  The  Popes  and  Science,  by 
Dr.  J.  J.  Walsh,  pp.  125-6. 


104  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


course,  have  been  ignorant  people  who  objected  to  it  on  this 
score,  but  such  an  objection  could  not  have  been  advanced 
officially  because,  as  we  saw  in  the  last  chapter,  the  dogma 
does  not  relate  to  our  existing  physical  bodies  but  to  the 
fact  “  that  in  any  final  consummation  the  bodily  life  of  man 
must  find  a  place  no  less  than  the  spiritual. ’  '  Such  being 
the  case,  it  is  not  surprising  to  find  that  in  the  Middle  Ages 
no  objection  was  made  officially  to  dissection  on  religious 
grounds.  The  Bull  promulgated  by  Boniface  VIII  which 
has  so  often  been  interpreted  as  forbidding  dissection  had 
another  purpose.  Its  aim  was  to  stop  a  barbarous  custom 
which  had  grown  up  of  boiling  the  corpses  of  distinguished 
people  who  had  died  in  foreign  lands  in  order  to  remove  the 
flesh  before  sending  the  bones  home  to  be  buried.  Bene¬ 
dict  XIV  on  being  asked  as  to  whether  this  Bull  forbade 
dissection  replied  as  follows  : — 

“  By  the  singular  beneficence  of  God  the  study  of  medicine 
flourished  in  a  very  wonderful  manner  in  this  city  (Rome). 
Its  professors  are  known  for  their  supreme  talents  to  the 
remotest  parts  of  the  earth.  There  is  no  doubt  that  they 
have  greatly  benefited  by  the  diligent  labour  which  they 
have  devoted  to  dissection.  From  this  practice  beyond 
doubt  they  have  gained  a  profound  knowledge  of  their  art 
and  a  proficienc}^  that  has  enabled  them  to  give  advice  for 
the  benefit  of  the  ailing  as  well  as  a  skill  in  the  curing  of 
disease.  Now  such  dissection  of  bodies  is  in  no  way  contrary 
to  the  Bull  of  Pope  Boniface.  He  indeed  imposed  the  penalty 
of  excommunication,  to  be  remitted  only  by  the  Sovereign 
Pontiff  himself,  upon  all  those  who  would  dare  to  disembow’el 
the  body  of  any  dead  person  and  either  dismember  it  or 
horribly  cut  it  up,  separating  the  flesh  from  the  bones.  From 
the  rest  of  this  Bull,  however,  it  is  clear  that  this  penalty 
was  only  to  be  inflicted  upon  those  who  took  bodies  already 
buried  out  of  their  graves,  and,  by  an  act  horrible  in  itself, 
cut  them  in  pieces  in  order  that  they  might  carry  them 
elsewhere  and  place  them  in  another  tomb.  It  is  very 
clear,  however,  that  by  this,  the  dissection  of  bodies,  which 
has  proved  so  necessary  for  those  exercising  the  profession 
of  medicine  is  by  no  means  forbidden.”  1  This  reply  of 

1  The  Popes  and  Science,  p.  59. 


Medievalism  and  Science 


105 


the  Pope’s  ought  to  settle  the  question,  but  if  further  corrobor¬ 
ation  is  needed  it  may  be  mentioned  that  at  this  time  dis¬ 
section  was  carried  on  in  all  the  important  cities  in  Italy, 
at  Verona,  Pisa,  Naples,  Bologna,  Florence,  Padua,  Venice, 
and  at  the  Papal  Medical  School  at  Rome. 

Let  us  now  pass  on  to  consider  the  introduction  of  science 
into  Europe  by  the  Saracens.  As  a  plain  statement  of  fact, 
Europe  in  the  Middle  Ages  did  get  science  from  the  Saracens. 
This  is  perfectly  true.  But  the  deduction  #t  is  usual  to  make 
from  this  fact — namely,  that  the  lower  state  of  Western 
European  civilization  at  that  time  was  due  to  the  prejudice 
against  science  of  the  Mediaeval  mind  under  the  influence 
of  Christianity — is  most  demonstrably  false.  The  difference 
between  the  two  levels  of  civilization  is  to  be  accounted  for 
by  the  simple  fact  that  whereas  the  Saracens  established 

I  their  Empire  over  communities  already  civilized  in  which 
the  traditions  of  Roman  civilization  survived,  the  Mediae¬ 
val  Church  had  the  much  more  difficult  task  of  rebuilding 
Western  civilization  from  its  very  foundations  after  it  had 
been  entirely  destroyed  by  the  barbarians.  Naturally  this, 
in  its  early  stages,  was  a  much  slower  process.  Bearing  in 
mind  these  circumstances,  there  is  nothing  remarkable  in 
the  fact  that  the  Saracens  knew  of  Aristotle  and  the  sciences 
at  a  time  when  Western  Europeans  did  not.  But  that 
the  Medievalists  accepted  them  from  the  Saracens  is  surely 
evidence  of  an  open-mindedness  which  did  not  disdain  to 

!  learn  from  a  heterodox  enemy,  rather  than  of  an  incurable 
prejudice  against  all  new  kinds  of  knowledge.  How  unsub¬ 
stantial  is  this  charge  against  the  influence  of  Christianity 
becomes  apparent  when  the  question  is  asked,  Whence  did  the 
Saracens  get  their  knowledge  of  Aristotle  and  the  sciences  ? 
They  could  not  have  got  it  direct  from  the  Greeks,  for  Mahomet 
was  not  born  until  the  year  a.d.  571,  and  as  Christianity 
had  established  itself  at  least  two  centuries  before  in  the 
communities  around  and  east  of  the  Mediterranean  basin, 
apart  from  other  evidence  it  would  be  a  reasonable  speculation 
to  assume  that  they  got  their  knowledge  from  some  Christian 
source.  But  it  so  happens  that  this  is  not  a  matter  of 
speculation  but  of  ascertained  historical  fact,  the  Christian 
sect  of  Nestorians  having  been  the  connecting  link  by  which 


106  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


Greek  science  and  philosophy  were  transmitted  from  the 
conquered  to  the  conquerors,  and  it  came  about  this  way  : 

“  When  the  Caliphate  was  usurped  by  the  Ommiades, 
the  fugitive  Abbasid  princes,  Abbas  and  Ali,  sojourned 
among  the  Nestorians  of  Arabia,  Mesopotamia  and  Western 
Persia  and  from  them  acquired  a  knowledge  and  a  love  of 
Greek  Science  and  philosophy.  Upon  the  accession  of  the 
Abbasid  dynasty  to  the  Caliphate  in  a.d.  750,  learned 
Nestorians  were  summoned  to  court.  By  them  Greek  books 
were  translated  into  Arabic  from  the  original  or  from  Syraic 
translations  and  the  foundations  laid  of  Arabic  science  and 
philosophy.  In  the  ninth  century  the  school  of  Bagdad 
began  to  flourish,  just  when  the  schools  of  Christendom 
were  falling  into  decay  in  the  West  and  into  decrepitude 
in  the  East.  The  newly  awakened  Moslem  intellect  busied 
itself  at  first  chiefly  with  mathematics  and  medical  science  ; 
afterwards  Aristotle  threw  his  spell  over  it  and  an  immense 
system  of  orientalized  Aristotelianism  was  the  result.  From 
the  East  Moslem  learning  was  carried  into  Spain  ;  and  from 
Spain  Aristotle  re-entered  Northern  Europe  once  more  and 
revolutionized  the  intellectual  life  of  Christendom  far  more 
completely  than  he  had  revolutionized  the  intellectual  life 
of  Islam. 

“  During  the  course  of  the  twelfth  century  a  struggle  had 
been  going  on  in  the  bosom  of  Islam  between  the  philosophers 
and  the  theologians.  It  was  just  at  the  moment  when, 
through  the  favour  of  the  Caliph  Almansur,  the  theologians 
had  succeeded  in  crushing  the  philosophers  that  the  torch 
of  Aristotelian  thought  was  handed  on  to  Christendom. 
The  history  of  Arabic  philosophy,  which  had  never  succeeded 
in  touching  the  religious  life  of  the  people  or  leaving  a 
permanent  stamp  upon  the  religion  of  Mohammed,  ends 
with  the  death  of  Averroes  in  1198.  The  history  of  Christian 
Aristotelianism  and  of  the  new  scholastic  theology  which 
was  based  upon  it  begins  just  when  the  history  of  Arabic 
Aristotelianism  comes  abruptly  to  a  close.”  1 

Early  in  the  thirteenth  century  Aristotle  made  his  debut 
in  the  University  of  Paris.  But  the  translations  studied 

1  The  Universities  of  Europe  in  the  Middle  Ages,  by  Hastings  Rashdall, 
vol.  i.  pp.  351-2. 


Medievalism  and  Science 


107 


were  not  taken  from  the  Greek  but  from  the  Arabic.  Thus 
Aristotle  arrived  in  an  orientalized  dress  and  was  accompanied 
by  commentators  and  by  independent  works  of  Arabian 
philosophers,  some  of  which  claimed  the  sanction  of  Aristotle’s 
name.  This  new  learning,  which  brought  with  it  a  whole 
cargo  of  heresies,  was  associated  with  the  name  of  Averroes 
(who  incidentally  was  persecuted  by  the  Saracens  as  a  heretic 
during  his  lifetime  and  remembered  only  as  a  physician 
and  jurist  after  his  death).  “  It  stirred  the  mental  powers 
to  recover  an  earlier  and  now  lost  truth  sometimes  moving 
the  mind  to  science,  sometimes  to  strange  apocalyptic  vision  ; 
now  to  a  conviction  that  a  fresh  outpouring  of  the  Spirit  was 
impending,  now  to  pantheistic  denial  of  all  explicit  revela¬ 
tion  or  positive  religion,  now  to  a  defiant  sectarianism,  now 
to  the  wild  torture  of  ascetic  individualism.”  1  Whatever 
the  form,  all  were  animated  by  a  genuine  hostility  to  the 
powers  that  were,  and  Paris  was  the  scene  of  an  outburst 
of  free  thought  which  at  one  time  promised  to  pass  far 
beyond  the  limits  of  the  schools.  This  outbreak  of  heresy 
goes  far  to  explain  the  alarm  with  which  the  advent  of  the 
Arabic  Aristotle  was  at  first  regarded.  It  was  followed  by 
a  persecution  of  heretics.  In  1210  “  a  batch  of  persons 
infected  with  heresy — priests  and  clerks  from  the  neighbouring 
Grand-pont — were  handed  over  to  the  secular  arm,  some 
for  the  stake,  others  for  perpetual  imprisonment.  At  the 
same  time  the  books  of  Aristotle  upon  natural  philosophy 
and  his  commentators  were  forbidden  to  be  read  at  Paris 
publicly  or  privately  for  a  period  of  three  years.”3 

The  rapidity  with  which  Aristotle,  and  even  his  Arabic 
commentators,  lived  down  these  suspicions  and  was  trans¬ 
formed  into  a  pillar  of  orthodoxy  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
facts  in  the  history  of  the  Middle  Ages.  The  study  of  Aris¬ 
totle  had  been  forbidden  by  the  Council  of  Paris.  It  was 
renewed  by  Pope  Gregory  IX  in  1231  but  with  the  significant 
reservation  “  until  they  have  been  examined  and  purged 
of  all  heresy.”  But  this  ban  was  soon  removed.  Copies 
of  Aristotle  in  the  original  Greek  were  obtained  from  Con¬ 
stantinople,  and  with  the  aid  of  these  the  theologians  soon 

1  Religious  Thought  and  Heresy  in  the  Middle  Ages,  by  F.  W.  Bussell,  p.  6. 

2  Rashdall,  vol.  i.  pp.  356-7. 


108  A  Guilds  man's  Interpretation  of  History 


learnt  the  art  of  distinguishing  the  genuine  Aristotle  from 
spurious  imitations  and  assisted  greatly  in  the  advancement 
and  purification  of  science  by  the  resistance  they  offered 
to  the  study  of  alchemy,  astrology  and  magic  with  which 
in  those  days  it  was  associated.  In  1254  nearly  the  whole 
range  of  Aristotelian  writings  were  prescribed  by  a  statue 
of  the  Faculty  of  Arts  at  Paris  as  textbooks  for  its  masters. 

These  facts,  then,  make  it  clear  that  there  was  no  opposition 
to  the  study  of  Aristotle  and  the  sciences  as  such,  but  to 
the  heresies  which  were  associated  with  them.  Experience 
proved  that  so  far  from  this  opposition  being  detrimental 
to  the  cause  of  science  it  had  the  opposite  effect  of  furthering 
its  interests  by  cleansing  it  of  falsities.  The  task  of  proving 
to  the  world  that  faith  and  science  might  go  hand  in  hand 
was  the  work  of  the  two  great  monastic  orders  of  St.  Dominic 
and  St.  Francis,  which  came  into  existence  about  this  time 
and  immediately  owed  their  existence  to  the  need  of  defending 
Christendom  against  the  new  forces  of  wealth  and  learning 
which  threatened  it  with  ruin.  The  intellectual  life  of 
Europe  for  the  next  two  centuries  is  so  intimately  bound 
up  with  these  two  great  orders  that  it  becomes  necessary 
to  pause  to  give  a  brief  account  of  them. 

While  both  of  these  orders  attacked  what  was  ultimately 
the  same  problem,  they  attacked  it  in  fundamentally  different 
ways.  The  problem  as  St.  Francis  saw  it  was  that  the  social 
evils  and  heresies  had  their  root  in  a  corrupted  human  nature 
to  which  men  became  increasingly  liable  as  they  acquired 
wealth  and  so  lost  touch  with  the  primary  facts  of  life.  St. 
Francis  was  a  simple,  unintellectual  layman,  and  confronted 
with  the  problems  of  his  age,  he  turned  his  back  upon  the 
world  with  its  wealth,  its  learning  and  its  heresies,  which 
he  regarded  as  vanities,  and  taught  a  gospel  of  poverty, 
work  and  renunciation.  His  followers  were  to  renounce 
wealth  and  all  intellectual  pursuits  and  seek  salvation  through 
work.  They  were  to  labour  among  the  poor,  and  in  order 
that  they  might  be  of  service  to  them  they  were  to  seek 
identity  with  them  in  position  and  fortune.  In  a  word, 
the  Franciscans  were  the  Salvation  Army  of  their  day, 
differing  with  them  to  the  extent  that  they  eventually  became 
one  of  the  great  intellectual  forces  of  the  age. 


Medievalism  and  Science 


109 


St.  Dominic  approached  the  problem  from  the  opposite 
end.  It  was  not  with  him  so  much  that  the  heart  was 
going  wrong  as  the  head.  He  accepted  civilization  and  its 
accompaniments.  Science,  music,  architecture,  painting  were 
each  to  be  regarded  as  a  path  through  which  truth  could 
be  approached.  But  he  realized  clearly  as  few  people 
to-day  did,  until  quite  recently  when  the  war  shook  us 
out  of  our  complacency,  that  knowledge  may  just  as  easily 
be  an  agent  for  evil  as  for  good.  Nay,  more  easily  ;  since 
left  to  itself  without  any  central  and  guiding  principle  to 
co-ordinate  its  activities,  it  will,  instead  of  serving  the  common 
interests  of  mankind,  degenerate  into  mere  pedantry  by 
being  exalted  as  an  end  in  itself,  or  become  a  disruptive 
force  by  giving  rise  to  heresies,  or  be  used  for  selfish  and 
personal  ends.  Hence  it  was  that  the  Dominicans,  like 
the  Franciscans,  broke  with  the  monastic  tradition  of  settling 
in  the  country  and  established  themselves  in  the  towns, 
and  firstly  in  those  where  universities  were  established — 
at  Paris,  Bologna  and  Oxford — in  order  to  keep  themselves 
informed  of  all  the  learning  of  the  day.  They  realized  that 
though  the  suppression  of  heresy  might  prevent  foolish 
people,  who  were  carried  off  their  feet  by  the  introduction 
of  new  ideas,  from  bringing  truth  itself  into  discredit  by 
seeking  the  popularization  of  immature  thought,  yet  Mediaeval 
civilization  could  not  be  preserved  merely  by  repressive 
measures  and  that  the  only  final  justification  for  such  repres¬ 
sion  was  as  a  measure  of  expediency  to  gain  time  for  the 
proper  formulation  of  thought,  in  order  that  it  might  be 
organized  into  a  constructive  force  instead  of  dissipating 
itself  in  intellectual  subtleties,  heresies  and  disruptive 
influences.  Their  method  made  for  thoroughness  and  was 
the  enemy  of  superficiality. 

The  Dominicans  were  not  long  in  demonstrating  to  the 
world  the  wisdom  of  their  policy.  Two  great  Dominicans, 
Albertus  Magnus  and  St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  were  the  means 
of  purging  the  reputation  of  Aristotle  of  ill  fame  by  the 
development  of  a  great  system  of  orthodox  Aristotelianism 
which  drew  a  clear  line  between  the  provinces  of  science 
and  religion.  “  The  lines  laid  down  by  Aquinas  as  to  the 
attitude  of  reason  towards  revelation  are,  amid  all  change 


110  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


of  belief  as  to  the  actual  content  of  revelation,  the  lines 
in  which,  as  much  in  the  Protestant  as  in  the  Mediaeval 
or  Modern  Roman  Churches,  the  main  current  of  thought 
has  moved  ever  since. ”  1  It  revolutionized  theology.  One 
of  their  contemporaries  insists  on  the  absolute  novelty 
of  their  methods,  arguments,  reasons,  objections  and  replies. 
They  not  only  won  back  the  universities  to  the  allegiance 
of  the  Church  but  secured  for  science  the  patronage  of  the 
Church.  Henceforth  science  becomes  a  recognized  faculty 
in  every  Mediaeval  university,  and  its  study  is  encouraged 
by  the  Popes.  John  XXII  was  a  great  patron  of  science, 
as  indeed  was  Pius  II.  An  extract  from  his  Bull  promulgated 
for  the  University  of  Basle  in  1460  will  bear  quotation.  It 
runs  :  “  Among  the  different  blessings  which  by  the  grace 

of  God  mortals  can  attain  to  in  this  earthly  life,  it  is  not 
among  the  least  that,  by  persevering  study,  he  can  make 
himself  master  of  the  pearls  of  science  and  learning  which 
point  the  way  to  a  good  and  useful  life.  Furthermore, 
education  brings  man  to  a  nearer  likeness  to  God,  and  enables 
him  to  read  clearly  the  secrets  of  this  universe.  True  educa¬ 
tion  and  learning  lift  the  meanest  of  earth  to  a  level  with 
the  highest.”  “  For  this  reason,”  continues  the  Pope, 
“  the  Holy  See  has  always  encouraged  the  sciences  and 
contributed  to  the  establishment  of  places  of  learning,  in 
order  that  men  might  be  enabled  to  acquire  this  precious 
treasure  and,  having  acquired  it,  might  spread  it  among 
their  fellow-men.”  It  was  his  ardent  desire  “  that  one  of 
these  life-giving  fountains  should  be  established  at  Basle, 
so  that  all  who  wished  might  drink  their  fill  at  the  waters 
of  learning.”3 

Such  words  did  not  fall  upon  deaf  ears.  The  annals 
of  the  universities  show  how  zealously  the  clergy  acted  on 
the  Pope’s  exhortation  to  study  science  not  only  by  advising 
young  men  to  follow  such  studies  but  by  attending  as  students 
themselves.  For  in  the  Mediaeval  universities  men  of  all 
ages  and  from  every  class  of  society  mingled  together.  Young 
men  of  peasant  origin  were  there  with  men  of  ripe  years  and 
of  established  position — abbots,  provosts,  canons  and  princes. 
Never  were  there  more  democratic  institutions.  The  comrade- 

1  Rashdall,  vol.  i.  p.  367.  3  Janssen,  vol.  i.  pp.  88-9. 


Medievalism  and  Science 


111 


ship  through  the  university  was  one  in  which  all  who  went 
there  met  on  equal  terms.  The  universities  were  self- 
governing  corporations,  they  paid  no  taxes,  and  were  accorded 
many  privileges  as  a  token  of  respect  to  learning.  All 
classes  contributed  to  their  support,  but  the  clergy  were 
by  far  the  most  generous. 

But  to  return  to  our  subject.  Not  only  did  the  labours 
of  Albertus  Magnus  and  St.  Thomas  Aquinas  effect  a  re¬ 
conciliation  between  the  Church  and  science  by  indicating 
the  spirit  in  which  the  new  teaching  was  to  be  received, 
but  they  also  wrote  upon  psychology,  metaphysics,  physics, 
physiology,  natural  history,  morals  and  social  science.  The 
former  especially  was  an  indefatigable  student  of  nature. 
His  twenty-one  folio  volumes  are  considered  a  perfect  ency¬ 
clopaedia  both  of  the  knowledge  and  polemics  of  his  time, 
and  it  is  claimed  for  them  that  together  with  the  compila¬ 
tions  of  Vincent  of  Beauvais  they  laid  the  basis  of  the  great 
scientific  encyclopaedias  of  our  day.  Albertus,  moreover, 
applied  himself  energetically  to  the  experimental  sciences. 
But  the  credit  for  this  new  departure,  which  revolutionized 
the  method  of  science,  belongs  to  the  Franciscans  rather 
than  the  Dominicans.  “  They  took  up  the  study  of  physics 
and  chemistry,  not,  however,  as  heretofore,  by  the  path  of 
theoretical  speculation,  but  by  the  co-operation  of  experiment 
— an  advance  in  method  they  were  the  first  to  establish, 
and  by  which  Roger  Bacon  arrived  at  the  most  remarkable 
results  in  almost  every  branch  of  physical  science/ *  1 

Now  the  fact  that  this  new  development  came  through 
the  Franciscans  is  interesting,  and  I  think  it  is  fair  to  assume 
that  it  was  no  accident.  Immediately  it  was  due  to  the 
fact  that  the  care  of  the  sick  which  was  enjoined  upon  them 
tended  to  direct  their  minds  towards  the  study  of  medicine 
and  natural  history.  But  there  was  a  deeper  reason.  The 
Franciscans  had  a  strong  practical  bend  of  mind.  Learning 
being  forbidden  them  by  the  rule  of  their  order,  they  naturally 
acquired  the  invaluable  habit  of  observing  facts  for  them¬ 
selves — a  habit  which  book-learning  is  very  apt  to  destroy. 
Men  who  begin  life  with  much  book-knowledge  are  very 
apt  to  look  at  things  from  the  special  angle  provided  by 
1  Pictures  of  Old  England,  by  Dr.  Reinhold  Pauli,  chap.  ii. 


112  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


the  books  they  have  read  and  to  neglect  the  lessons  which 
the  observation  of  facts  can  teach.  It  was  thus  that  the 
Franciscans'  renunciation  of  learning  stood  them  in  good 
stead  ;  it  proved  to  be  the  means  whereby  a  new  impulse 
was  given  to  the  acquisition  of  knowledge.  The  central 
idea  of  Christianity — that  the  world  can  only  be  conquered 
by  those  who  are  first  prepared  to  renounce  it — is  a  principle 
of  action  that  holds  good  just  as  much  in  the  intellectual 
and  scientific  as  in  the  moral  universe,  and  I  might  add  that 
in  so  far  as  any  progress  has  in  these  days  been  made  in  the 
revival  of  architecture,  the  crafts  and  arts,  it  has  come  about 
through  the  actions  of  men  who  proceeded  upon  this  principle. 
The  return  to  fundamentals  always  involves  renunciation. 

While  it  is  to  be  acknowledged  that  the  foundations 
of  modern  science  were  laid  in  the  Middle  Ages,  it  is  equally 
important  to  recognize  that  the  new  impulse  which  the 
Franciscans  gave  was  essentially  a  Mediaeval  one,  and  that 
science  remains  Mediaeval  in  its  method  to  this  day.  For 
when  the  Franciscans  threw  over  the  method  of  theoretical 
speculation  in  favour  of  co-operation  by  experiment,  they 
gave  practical  application  in  the  realm  of  science  to  the 
method  of  work  which  in  the  Middle  Ages  obtained  in  the 
arts,  for,  as  we  shall  see  in  the  next  chapter,  Gothic  Art 
was  the  creation  of  experimental  handicraft,  and  it  was 
the  abandonment  of  this  method  owing  to  Renaissance 
influences  that  finally  led  to  the  disappearance  of  art  from 
the  world.  But  science  never  threw  over  this  Mediaeval 
experimental,  craft  basis,  which  is  the  secret  of  its  progres¬ 
sive  development,  and  it  remains  Mediaeval  in  method  to 
this  day. 

But  while  science  remains  Mediaeval  in  its  method,  it 
is  no  longer  Mediaeval  in  its  spirit,  for  it  has  rejected  the 
discipline  by  which  the  Mediae valists  sought  to  guide  it. 
The  judgment  of  Albertus  Magnus  and  St.  Thomas  Aquinas 
that  there  were  two  orders  of  science — the  natural,  com¬ 
prising  everything  that  can  be  grasped  by  reason,  and  the 
supernatural,  which  comprises  all  the  truth  known  by  revela¬ 
tion — was  accepted  alike  by  the  Church  and  the  students 
of  science,  and  the  heretical  tendencies  which  had  come 
with  the  Arabic  Aristotle  dwindled  to  impotence.  Averroistic 


Medievalism  and  Science 


113 


beliefs  lingered  on  in  a  more  or  less  disguised  and  purely 
speculative  form,  disputants  in  the  Arts  avoiding  the  charge 
of  heresy  by  taking  cover  under  the  convenient  distinction 
between  philosophical  and  theological  truth,  maintaining 
that  what  was  true  in  the  one  might  be  false  in  the  other 
and  vice  versa.  But  when  in  the  sixteenth  century,  owing 
to  the  influence  of  the  Renaissance  of  which  we  shall  have 
something  to  say  hereafter,  belief  in  the  absolute  truth  of 
the  Christian  revelation  had  come  to  be  widely  questioned, 
there  was  a  new  outburst  of  pantheism  and  free  thought. 

It  was  because  of  his  advocacy  of  heresies,  and  not  because 
of  his  scientific  opinions,  that  Bruno  was  put  to  death.  The 
case  of  Galileo  is  different,  and  it  is  too  long  a  story  to  be 
gone  into  here.  There  were  faults  on  both  sides,  but  it 
cannot  be  maintained  that  the  attitude  of  the  Church  was 
determined  by  hostility  to  science,  and  in  this  connection 
I  cannot  do  better  than  quote  Huxley,  who,  writing  to 
Professor  Mivart  in  1885,  said  :  “  I  gave  some  attention 
to  the  case  of  Galileo  when  I  was  in  Italy,  and  I  arrived 
at  the  conclusion  that  the  Popes  and  the  College  of  Cardinals 
had  rather  the  best  of  it.”  1 

In  judging  the  attitude  of  the  Church  at  this  period  we 
must  not  forget  that  the  Copernican  theory  had  not  then 
been  proved,  but  was  only  advanced  as  a  hypothesis  and 
was  violently  attacked  by  scientists  at  the  time.  Kepler 
and  Newton  finally  proved  it.  What  the  Church  objected 
to  was  not  the  theory  that  the  earth  was  round,  but  the 
entirely  illogical  deduction  which  Galileo  made  from  it 
that  therefore  Christianity  was  false.  For  Christianity 
has  nothing  to  say  on  the  matter  at  all.  It  is  not  a  theory 
of  the  universe,  but  a  theory  of  conduct  basing  its  claim 
for  acceptance  upon  Divine  sanction.  The  Church,  moreover, 
bases  its  authority  upon  the  Christian  tradition,  and  not 
upon  the  Bible.  But  the  Church  was  nervous,  and  justifiably 
nervous,  at  the  consequences  which  might  follow  the  popular¬ 
ization  of  such  a  theory,  whether  it  eventually  proved  to 
be  true  or  not,  and  had  no  desire  to  meet  trouble  half-way. 
For  the  average  man  does  not  discriminate  very  carefully, 

1  Life  and  Letters,  vol.  ii.  p.  424.  See  also  Whetwell’s  History  of  Inductive 
Sciences. 


8 


114  A  Guildsmari*  s  Interpretation  of  History 


and  the  fact  that  the  story  that  Joshua  commanded  the 
sun  to  stand  still  upon  Gibeon  is  to  be  found  in  the  Bible 
is  sufficient  in  the  minds  of  many  to  discredit  the  whole 
Christian  theology  as  a  degrading  superstition  and  to  release 
them  from  all  the  moral  obligations  which  Christianity  sought 
to  impose.  And  this  nervousness  was  not  felt  only  by  the 
Roman  Church.  Whereas  the  Church  did  its  best  to  handle 
a  difficult  situation  in  a  diplomatic  way,  demanding  no 
more  than  that  scientists  should  not  preach  unproven 
hypotheses  as  truth,  the  leaders  of  Protestantism  were 
violent  in  their  opposition.  Luther  denounced  Copernicus  as 
an  arrogant  fool  who  would  overthrow  all  scientific  astro¬ 
nomy  and  contradicted  Holy  Writ,  while  Melanchthon  wished 
the  promulgation  of  such  pestilent  doctrines  to  be  suppressed 
by  the  civil  power.1  In  the  turmoil  of  the  Reformation 
science  and  heresy  became  more  closely  related  though 
by  no  means  identified,  for  science  was  followed  and  encour¬ 
aged  as  much  by  the  post-Reformation  Church  as  by  the 
Mediaeval  one. 

It  is  to  be  observed  that  heresy  is  not  necessarily  a  belief 
in  something  false,  but  an  exaggeration  of  one  aspect  of 
truth  insisted  upon  to  the  damage  or  denial  of  other  and 
equally  important  truths.  The  tendency  of  scientists  to 
exaggerate  the  importance  of  the  material  side  of  things 
whilst  ignoring  as  imponderable  the  spiritual  and  moral 
side  of  life  is  their  peculiar  form  of  heresy.  It  results  in 
a  loss  of  mental  balance,  a  failure  to  see  life  as  a  whole, 
in  its  true  proportions.  It  makes  the  scientist  an  untrust¬ 
worthy  guide  in  the  practical  affairs  of  life.  The  publication 
of  Lord  Bacon’s  Advancement  of  Learning  and  the  Novum 
Organum  served  only  to  increase  the  tendency  of  the  scien¬ 
tific  mind  towards  monomania — a  tendency  which  appears 
to  be  the  inevitable  accompaniment  of  an  exclusive  pre¬ 
occupation  with  the  study  of  phenomena.  The  inductive 
method  is  the  method  of  reasoning  familiar  to  all  who  concern 
themselves  with  the  practical  arts,  and  is  invaluable  for  the 
attainment  of  certain  immediate  and  definite  ends.  But 
the  attempt  of  Bacon  to  give  it  universal  validity — for, 
as  Macaulay  said,  it  is  ridiculous  to  suppose  he  invented 

1  See  Prowe,  Nicolaus  Copernicus,  vol.  i.  part  ii.  p.  232-4. 


Medievalism  and  Science 


115 


it — must  after  the  experience  of  over  three  centuries  of 
work  upon  such  lines  be  judged  a  failure,  for  science  is  as 
far  from  the  truth  of  things  as  ever.  “  After  a  glorious 
burst  of  perhaps  fifty  years,  amid  great  acclamation  and 
good  hopes  that  the  crafty  old  universe  was  going  to  be 
caught  in  her  careful  net,  science  finds  herself  in  almost 
every  direction  in  the  most  hopeless  quandaries  ;  and  whether 
the  rib  story  be  true  or  not,  has,  at  any  rate,  provided  no 
very  satisfactory  substitute  for  it.”  1 

The  reason  for  this  failure  is  obvious.  There  is  no  such 
thing  as  a  purely  materialist  explanation  of  the  universe. 
Final  causation  is  not  to  be  found  in  the  material  world, 
and  scientists,  in  excluding  the  spiritual  side  of  things  from 
their  calculations  as  imponderable,  exclude  the  consideration 
of  those  things  which  might  offer  an  explanation.  For 
unity  is  to  be  found  at  the  centre  of  life  ;  it  is  not  to  be 
deduced  merely  from  a  study  of  phenomena  on  the  circum¬ 
ference.  But  even  if  science  were  to  follow  the  lead  given 
by  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  and  carried  its  investigations  beyond 
the  material  into  the  realm  of  psychic  phenomena,  it  could 
never  penetrate  the  final  mystery  of  life.  The  moral  principles 
to  which  religions  give  sanction  are  finally  commandments 
and  incapable  of  rationalist  explanation,  though  experience 
of  their  working  may  be  able  to  give  them  rationalist  justi¬ 
fication.  They  are  not  to  be  deduced  from  the  study  of 
phenomena,  but  rest  finally  on  the  affirmation  of  the 
supernatural. 

While  it  must  be  admitted  that  reasoning  based  exclusively 
upon  phenomena  has  failed  to  penetrate  the  mystery  of 
the  universe,  the  invasion  of  other  departments  of  inquiry 
by  the  inductive  method  of  reasoning,  such  as  that  of  sociology 
has  been  followed  by  results  equally  disastrous.  It  has 
produced  endless  confusion.  It  is  possible  to  deduce  second¬ 
ary  truth  from  primary  truth,  but  not  the  reverse,  which 
science  attempts.  I  sometimes  think  that  the  Devil  made 
his  debut  in  the  modern  world  as  the  friend  of  learning, 
which  he  had  the  insight  to  see  might  be  used  for  the  purpose 
of  banishing  wisdom  by  the  simple  and  apparently  innocent 
device  of  multiplying  knowledge.  At  any  rate,  whether  the 

1  Civilization  :  its  Cause  and  Cure,  by  Edward  Carpenter. 


116  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 

Devil  planned  or  no,  such  has  been  its  practical  effect.  For 
the  multiplication  of  knowledge  has  certainly  introduced 
confusion  into  the  popular  mind.  Thus  it  has  come  about 
that  the  scientific  method  of  inquiry  has  had  the  effect  of 
burying  primary  truth  under  an  avalanche  of  secondary 
half-truths.  It  has  exalted  knowledge  above  wisdom, 
mechanism  above  art,  science  above  religion,  man  above 
God.  In  thus  reversing  the  natural  order  of  the  moral 
and  intellectual  universe,  it  has  led  to  a  general  state  of 
mental  bewilderment  such  as  was  never  before  witnessed. 
The  ambition  of  the  scientist  to  comprehend  all  knowledge 
has  been  followed  by  the  unfortunate  discovery  that  knowledge 
— the  things  to  be  known — is  bigger  than  his  head,  and  he 
gets  some  inkling  of  the  meaning  of  the  proverb  :  “A  fool’s 
eyes  are  on  the  ends  of  the  earth.” 

Considerations  of  this  kind  lead  me  to  the  conclusion 
that  civilization  has  reached  a  turning-point  not  only  in  its 
political  and  economic  history,  but  in  its  very  methods 
and  ideas,  and  that  the  next  development  must  be  away 
from  the  universal  towards  a  reassertion  of  the  principle 
of  unity  which  was  the  central  principle  of  Mediaeval  thought. 
In  the  new  synthesis  which  will  appear,  science  will  not 
attempt  to  lead  mankind,  but  will  be  content  with  a  secondary 
and  subordinate  position.  Science  has  terribly  misled  the 
world.  But  it  is  possible  that  all  its  work  has  not  been 
in  vain.  For  it  has  explored  the  universe  for  us,  and  as  a 
result  of  its  labours  it  may  be  that  when  the  new  order  does 
arrive  it  will  rest  on  much  surer  foundations  than  ever  did 
the  civilizations  of  the  past.  With  the  knowledge  of  evil 
which  science  let  loose  upon  the  world,  we  know  where 
the  pitfalls  lie.  But  we  shall  never  be  able  to  conquer  this 
mass  of  knowledge  which  science  has  given  us  until  we  have 
first  the  courage  to  renounce  it. 


CHAPTER  VIII 


THE  ARTS  OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 

In  an  earlier  chapter  I  said  that  the  promise  of  Medievalism 
was  never  entirely  fulfilled.  That  is  true  of  its  life  and  social 
organization.  The  sinister  influence  of  Roman  Law  began 
to  dissolve  it  before  it  was  as  yet  firmly  established.  But 
it  is  not  true  of  the  Arts,  for  in  them  the  promise  was  entirely 
fulfilled,  and  for  this  consummation  we  are  indebted  to  the 
two  great  Mediaeval  orders — the  Dominicans  and  the  Francis¬ 
cans  ;  the  former  because  of  their  intellectual  orthodoxy, 
which  preserved  Mediaeval  society  from  disruption  at  the 
hands  of  the  heretics,  and  because  of  the  encouragement 
and  help  they  gave  to  the  development  of  the  Arts,  and  the 
latter  because  of  the  new  spirit  and  vitality  which  they 
breathed  into  Medieval  society.  It  would  not  be  untrue 
to  say  that  from  the  beginning  of  the  thirteenth  century 
the  Mediaeval  spirit  as  it  expressed  itself  in  thought  and 
in  the  Arts  was  the  resultant  of  the  action  and  interaction  of 
the  Dominican  and  Franciscan  minds.  The  latter,  by  their 
emotional  temperament  and  broad  democratic  sympathies, 
tended  to  widen  the  range  of  experience,  to  venture  on  new 
experiments  and  to  encourage  new  developments,  while  the 
function  of  the  former  was  to  be  for  ever  gathering  up, 
as  it  were,  to  bring  unity  and  order  out  of  the  diversity 
to  which  the  Franciscan  spirit  ever  tended.  Yet  the  more 
these  two  orders  differed,  the  more  they  were  alike.  They 
were  alike  in  their  absolute  belief  in  Christianity  as  the 
truth  revealed,  and  in  their  detestation  of  the  pantheistic 
rationalism  which  began  to  show  its  head  at  the  beginning 
of  the  thirteenth  century,  and  which  they  combined  to 
crush. 


117 


118  A  Guildsman  s  Interpretation  of  History 


Gothic  Art,  which  reached  its  perfection  in  the  thirteenth, 
fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries,  was  a  tree  with  very 
deep  roots,  and  its  progressive  development  may  be  dated 
from  the  year  a.d.  800,  when  Charlemagne,  after  driving 
the  Saracens  out  of  France,  consolidated  his  power  and  was 
crowned  by  the  Pope  Emperor  of  the  West.  For  this  date 
is  not  only  a  definite  landmark  in  the  political  history  of 
Europe,  but  it  marks  a  turning-point  in  the  history  of  the 
Arts,  for  Charlemagne  was  more  than  a  successful  warrior  ; 
he  was  a  great  patron  of  culture,  and  endeavoured  successfully 
to  make  the  heart  of  his  Empire  a  centre  of  culture  and  learn¬ 
ing.  The  Palatine  Church  of  Aachen  (Aix-la-Chapelle),  built 
by  him  as  a  national  monument,  may  be  said  to  have  set 
in  motion  ideas  of  architecture  which  affected  the  whole 
of  Western  Europe.  To  this  Carlovingian  centre  there 
came  craftsmen  from  far  and  wide — from  Spain,  Lombardy, 
and  the  Eastern  Empire — for  it  was  the  ambition  of  Charle¬ 
magne  to  gather  together  such  remnants  of  Roman  tradition 
as  had  survived  the  barbarian  invasions  in  order  to  effect 
a  revival  of  the  Arts.  His  intention  was  to  revive  the  Roman 
Art  whose  splendid  remains  then  overspread  the  whole  of 
Gaul.  But  from  this  renaissance  there  arose  results  far 
different  from  what  he  had  anticipated,  differing  from  them, 
in  fact,  as  widely  as  his  Empire  differed  from  that  of  the 
Caesars.  His  object  of  revivifying  Art  was  achieved,  but 
not  in  the  way  he  proposed,  for  in  the  space  of  three  centuries 
the  movement  he  set  on  foot  led  to  the  creation  of  an  entirely 
new  style,  which,  though  it  long  bore  traces  of  its  origin,  was 
nevertheless,  as  a  whole,  unlike  anything  the  world  had 
ever  seen  before  ;  in  a  word,  Gothic  Art. 

The  immediate  reason  for  this  result,  so  different  from 
what  Charlemagne  had  anticipated,  is  to  be  found  in  the 
fact  that  the  craftsmen  whom  he  gathered  together  were 
possessed  of  traditions  of  design  differing  widely  from  those 
of  antiquity.  They  were,  moreover,  men  of  a  different  order. 
The  Roman  workmen  executed  designs  prepared  by  an  archi¬ 
tect  in  much  the  same  way  as  do  the  workmen  of  to-day, 
but  their  labour  was  essentially  servile.  But  these  newer 
craftsmen,  however,  not  only  executed  work  but  were 
themselves  individually  capable  of  exercising  the  function 


The  Arts  of  the  Middle  Ages 


119 


of  design.  Moreover,  they  were  capable  of  co-operating 
together,  for  they  shared  a  communal  tradition  of  design 
in  the  same  way  that  people  share  a  communal  tradition 
of  language.  Each  craftsman  worked  as  a  link  in  this  chain 
of  tradition,  and  this  changed  method  produced  a  different 
type  of  architecture.  It  was  a  communal  architecture, 
while  that  of  the  Roman  was  individual.  Not  individual 
in  the  modern  sense,  for  all  Roman  architects  practised 
the  same  style,  but  individual  in  the  sense  that  a 
Roman  building  was  the  design  of  one  man  who  directed 
the  workman  in  regard  to  the  details  of  his  work,  and 
no  room  was  left  for  the  initiative  of  the  individual 
craftsman. 

It  is  the  variety  of  detail  due  to  the  initiative  of  individuals 
that  lends  an  interest  to  Gothic  architecture  far  and  away 
beyond  that  of  the  personal  architecture  of  the  architect. 
It  has  a  richer  texture.  For  in  a  communal  art  “  each 
product  has  a  substance  and  content  to  which  the  greatest 
individual  artists  cannot  hope  to  attain — it  is  the  result 
of  organic  processes  of  thought  and  work.  A  great  artist 
might  make  a  little  advance,  a  poor  artist  might  stand  a 
little  behind  ;  but  the  work,  as  a  whole,  was  customary, 
and  was  shaped  and  perfected  by  a  life-experience  whose 
span  was  centuries.’ *  1 

In  the  Middle  Ages  every  craft  possessed  such  communal 
traditions  of  design,  and  each  craftsman  produced  the  designs 
that  he  executed.  But  in  the  production  of  architecture 
there  must  needs  be  some  one  to  co-ordinate  the  efforts 
of  the  individual  craftsmen.  This  position  in  the  Mediaeval 
period  was  occupied  by  the  master  mason  or  master  carpenter, 
as  the  case  might  be,  who  exercised  a  general  control  in 
addition  to  the  ordinary  requirements  of  his  craft.  He 
differed  from  the  architect  of  Roman  times  to  the  extent 
that  his  function  was  not  to  give  detailed  designs  for  others 
to  execute,  but  to  co-ordinate  the  efforts  of  living  units  ; 
it  was  the  custom  then  for  each  craft  to  supply  its  own 
details  and  ornaments. 

This  different  system  naturally  gave  different  results. 
Roman  architecture,  or,  to  be  more  correct,  the  Greek, 

1  Medicsval  Art,  by  W.  R.  Lethaby. 


■  •  •>  "’wi 

. 

120  .4  Guildsman’s  Interpretation  of  History 

from  which  it  was  derived,  was  refined  and  intellectual. 
It  was  as  Lowell  said  : — 

As  unanswerable  as  Euclid, 

The  one  thing  finished  in  this  hasty  world. 

In  other  words,  it  was  a  kind  of  aesthetic  cul-de-sac 
from  which  the  only  escape  was  backwards  by  a  return 
to  the  crafts  :  for  it  is  only  by  and  through  the  actual  experi¬ 
ment  with  material  that  new  ideas  in  detail  can  be  evolved. 
A  skilful  architect  may  have  fine  general  ideas,  but  he  will 
have  no  new  ideas  of  detail.  Such  details  as  he  does  use 
will  be  studied  from  the  work  done  in  the  past  by  actual 
craftsmen,  for,  as  I  have  already  said,  it  is  by  actually  hand¬ 
ling  material  that  new  ideas  of  detail  can  be  evolved.  Hence 
it  was  that  the  Mediaeval  system  of  building,  by  giving  the 
master  minds  opportunities  for  actually  working  on  their 
buildings,  developed  a  richness  and  wealth  of  detail  unknown 
to  Greek  or  Roman  work.  And  what  is  of  further  interest, 
all  the  details  to  which  Gothic  Art  gave  rise  had  a  peculiar 
relation  to  the  material  used.  Greek  and  Roman  architecture 
is  abstract  form  which  is  applied  more  or  less  indifferently 
to  any  material.  But  it  is  one  of  the  aims  of  Gothic  design 
to  bring  out  the  intrinsic  qualities  of  the  materials.  The 
details  in  each  case  are  peculiar  to  the  material  used.  Thus, 
in  carving  any  natural  object,  it  would  be  the  aim  of  the 
craftsman  not  merely  to  suggest  the  general  form  of  the 
thing  intended,  but  to  suggest,  in  addition,  the  qualities 
of  the  material  in  which  it  is  executed.  The  treatment  would, 
therefore,  be  conventionalized — a  lion  would  emphatically 
be  a  wooden  lion,  a  stone  lion  or  a  bronze  lion,  as  the  case 
might  be.  It  would  never  be  a  merely  naturalistic  lion  : 
in  each  case  there  would  be  no  mistaking  the  material  of 
which  it  was  made,  for  the  form  would  be  developed  upon 
lines  which  the  technical  production  of  each  most  readily 
suggests.  That  is  the  secret  of  convention. 

Now,  this  change  from  the  Roman  to  the  Gothic  method 
of  work  is  finally  to  be  accounted  for  by  the- fact  that,  since 
the  day  when  the  Roman  style  was  practised,  Christianity 
had  triumphed  in  the  world,  and  with  it  a  new  spirit  had  come 
into  existence.  In  Greece  and  Rome  the  humble  worker  had 


t 


The  Arts  of  the  Middle  Ages 


121 


been  treated  with  scorn  by  men  of  science  and  philosophers. 
The  ordinary  man  accepted  his  inferior  status  as  necessary 
to  the  natural  order  of  things.  Even  slaves  did  not  regard 
their  position  as  contrary  to  morality  and  right.  In  the 
thousand  revolts  of  the  slaves  of  antiquity  there  was  never 
any  appeal  to  any  ethical  principle  or  assertion  of  human 
rights.  On  the  contrary,  they  were  purely  and  simply 
appeals  to  force  by  men  who  thought  themselves  sufficiently 
strong  to  rebel  successfully.  But  while  these  revolts  failed 
to  abolish  slavery — for  there  was  never  a  successful  slave 
revolt — Christianity  succeeded,  by  effecting  a  change  of 
spirit  which  gradually  dissolved  the  old  order.  It  transformed 
society  by  bringing  about  a  state  of  things  in  which  human 
values  took  precedence  over  economic  values.  Little  by 
little  this  changed  spirit  came  to  affect  the  Arts.  The 
humble  worker  began  to  gain  confidence,  and  to  think  and 
feel  on  his  own  account.  This  changed  feeling,  combined 
with  the  communal  spirit  which  Christianity  everywhere 
fostered,  tended  to  bring  into  existence  those  communal 
traditions  of  handicraft  which  reached  their  most  consummate 
expression  in  Gothic  Art.  For  Gothic  Art  is  just  as  demo¬ 
cratic  in  spirit  as  the  Greek  and  Roman  is  servile.  Every 
line  of  Gothic  Art  contradicts  the  popularly  accepted  notion 
that  the  Middle  Ages  was  a  period  of  gloom  and  repression. 
The  riot  of  carving,  the  gaiety  and  vigour  of  the  little  grotesques 
that  peer  out  from  pillars  and  cornices,  the  pure  and  joyous 
colour  of  frescoes  and  illuminated  manuscripts,  the  delight 
in  work  that  overflowed  in  free  and  beautiful  details  in  the 
common  articles  of  daily  use,  tell  the  tale  of  a  rich  and 
abounding  life,  just  as  much  as  the  unanswerable  logic  of 
Greek  architecture  tells  of  a  life  oppressed  with  the  sense 
of  fate. 

It  is  important  that  these  fundamental  differences  should 
be  acknowledged.  Gothic  architecture  was  the  visible  ex¬ 
pression,  the  flowering  of  the  dogmas  of  Christianity,  and 
it  cannot  finally  be  separated  from  them.  Apart  from 
them,  it  would  never  have  come  into  existence.  It  was 
precisely  because  the  men  of  the  Middle  Ages  had  their 
minds  at  rest  about  the  thousand  and  one  doubts  and 
difficulties  which  perplex  us,  as  they  perplexed  the  Greeks, 


L 


! 


. 

122  A  Guild  smart's  Interpretation  of  History 

that  it  was  possible  for  them  to  develop  that  wonderful 
sense  of  romantic  beauty  which  enabled  them  to  build  the 
cathedrals,  abbeys,  and  churches  that  cover  Europe.  If 
the  acceptance  of  dogmas  puts  boundaries  to  the  intellect 
in  one  direction,  it  does  so  to  break  down  barriers  in  another, 
for  dogmas  do  not  strangle  thought,  but  cause  it  to  flow 
in  a  different  direction.  Under  Paganism  thought  flowed 
inwards,  giving  us  philosophy  ;  under  Christianity  it  flows 
outwards,  giving  us  the  Arts,  Guilds  and  economics.  Gothic 
Art,  like  Christian  dogmas,  rests  finally  upon  affirmations. 
It  seems  to  say  :  This  is  the  right  way  of  treating  stonework  ; 
this,  brickwork  ;  this,  leadwork  ;  and  so  on.  And  it  says 
all  these  things  with  authority  in  terms  that  admit  of  no 
ambiguity. 

While  Gothic  Art  was  democratic  in  spirit  the  Mediaeval 
craftsman  understood  clearly  the  limits  of  liberty.  He 
knew  that  liberty  was  only  possible  on  the  assumption  that 
boundaries  were  respected,  and  that  there  is  no  such  thing 
as  liberty  absolute.  Liberty  is  possible  on  certain  terms. 
It  involves  in  the  first  place  a  recognition  of  the  authority 
of  ultimate  truth,  or,  in  other  words,  of  dogmas,  because 
authority  is  in  the  nature  of  things,  and  men  who  refuse 
to  accept  the  authority  of  dogmas  will  find  themselves 
finally  compelled  to  acquiesce  in  the  authority  of  persons. 
That  is  why  revolutions  which  begin  by  seeking  to  overturn 
the  authority  of  ideas  invariably  end  by  establishing  the 
authority  of  persons.  A  respect  for  authority  of  ideas 
is  naturally  accompanied  by  a  respect  for  mastership,  which 
is  a  fundamentally  different  thing  from  authority  of  persons. 
For  whereas,  in  the  latter  case,  the  authority  is  necessarily 
exercised  arbitrarily,  in  the  former  it  is  not  so.  The  pupil 
asks  the  master  how  to  do  a  thing  because  he  wants  to  know. 
But  the  employer  tells  the  servant  what  he  requires  doing 
because  the  servant  has  no  desire  to  know.  That  is  the 
difference  between  the  two  relationships.  That  feeling  of 
personal  antagonism  which  exists  between  employers  and 
workers  to-day  did  not  exist  between  the  masters  and 
journeymen  of  the  Mediaeval  Guilds,  because  the  difference 
between  them  was  not  primarily  a  difference  of  economic 
status,  but  of  knowledge  and  skill.  Well  has  it  been 


I 


The  Arts  of  the  Middle  Ages 


123 


said  that  “  producers  of  good  articles  respect  one  another  ; 
producers  of  bad  articles  despise  one  another.”  1 

A  respect  for  the  principle  of  mastership  permeated 
Mediaeval  society,  while  it  informed  the  organization  of 
the  Guilds.  “  In  the  Middle  Ages,”  says  Professor  Lethaby, 
“  the  Masons’  and  Carpenters’  Guilds  were  faculties  or 
colleges  of  education  in  those  arts,  and  every  town  was, 
so  to  say,  a  craft  university.  Corporations  of  Masons, 
Carpenters,  and  the  like,  were  established  in  the  towns  ; 
each  craft  aspired  to  have  a  college  hall.  The  universities 
themselves  had  been  well  named  by  a  recent  historian 
'  Scholars’  Guilds.’  The  Guild,  which  recognized  all  the 
customs  of  its  trade,  guaranteed  the  relations  of  the  apprentice 
and  master  craftsman  with  whom  he  was  placed  ;  but  he 
was  really  apprenticed  to  the  craft  as  a  whole,  and  ultimately 
to  the  city  whose  freedom  he  engaged  to  take  up.  He  was, 
in  fact,  a  graduate  of  his  craft  college,  and  wore  its  robes. 
At  a  later  stage  the  apprentice  became  a  companion  or 
bachelor  of  his  art,  or  by  producing  a  master- work,  the 
thesis  of  his  craft,  he  was  admitted  a  master.  Only  then 
was  he  permitted  to  become  an  employer  of  labour,  or  was 
admitted  as  one  of  the  governing  body  of  his  college.  As 
a  citizen,  city  dignities  were  open  to  him.  He  might  become 
the  master  in  building  some  abbey  or  cathedral,  or,  as  King’s 
mason,  become  a  member  of  the  royal  household,  the  acknow¬ 
ledged  great  master  of  his  time  in  mason-craft.  With 
such  a  system,  was  it  so  very  wonderful  that  the  buildings 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  which  were,  indeed,  wonderful,  should 
have  been  produced  ?  ”  2 

Such,  then,  was  the  foundation  on  which  Gothic  architecture 
was  built.  In  its  earlier  phase,  as  we  meet  it  in  this  country 
in  the  Norman  architecture  of  the  twelfth  century,  it  is 
characterized  by  a  strong  handling  of  masses.  The  Norman 
builders  had  “  a  sense  of  the  large  proportions  of  things,” 
a  firm  grip  of  things  fundamental.  In  this  early  work  only 
a  bare  minimum  of  mouldings  and  ornaments  are  used, 
but  such  as  are  used  are  strong  and  vigorous.  The  general 
arrangement  of  parts  which  we  find  in  Norman  work  persists 

1  From  the  Human  End,  by  L.  P.  Jacks. 

2  Lecture  on  Technical  Education  in  the  Building  Trades,  by  W.  R.  Lethaby. 


124  A  Guilds  man*  s  Interpretation  of  History 


through  all  the  phases  of  Gothic,  but  the  details  or  secondary 
parts,  the  trimmings,  as  it  were,  receive  more  and  more 
attention,  until  finally,  in  the  sixteenth  century,  the  last 
phase  is  reached  in  Tudor  work,  when  Gothic  degenerates 
into  an  uninspired  formula,  and  the  multiplication  of  mechani¬ 
cal  and  accessory  parts  entirely  destroys  the  sense  of  spacious¬ 
ness,  which  is  the  mark  of  all  fine  architecture.  This  last 
phase  is  exemplified  in  this  country  in  Henry  VII  Chapel 
at  Westminster  Abbey  and  King’s  College  Chapel,  Cambridge, 
as  in  the  various  Hotels  de  Ville  of  Flanders.  Though 
architecture  of  this  kind  has  the  admiration  of  Baedeker,1 
it  is  simply  awful  stuff.  It  is  Gothic  in  its  dotage,  as  anybody 
who  knows  anything  about  architecture  is  aware. 

Though  there  is  much  very  beautiful  architecture  of  the 
fifteenth  century,  it  is  apparent  that  the  decline  of  Gothic 
dates  from  the  middle  of  the  century.  From  that  time 
onwards,  it  is,  generally  speaking,  true  to  say  that  the 
most  important  buildings  in  the  civic  sense  are  the  least 
important  from  an  architectural  point  of  view.  Most  of  the 
best  examples  of  later  Gothic  are  to  be  found  where  there 
was  not  too  much  money  to  spend,  for  after  the  middle  of 
the  fifteenth  century  the  restraining  influence  in  design  does 
not  appear  to  come  from  the  taste  of  the  craftsmen,  but  from 
the  poverty  of  their  clients. 

The  most  important  examples  of  Gothic  are  to  be  found 
in  Northern  France.  In  the  early  part  of  the  twelfth  century 
Paris  became  the  cultural  centre  of  Europe,  and  it  remained 
throughout  the  Middle  Ages  the  centre  of  thought  and  culture. 
It  was  here  that  the  Gothic  Cathedral  in  its  essence  as  a  kind 
of  energetic  structure  in  which  the  various  parts  of  pillars, 
vaults  and  buttresses  balance  each  other  was  developed. 
In  1140  the  abbey  church  of  St.  Denis,  a  few  miles  from 
Paris,  was  begun,  and  completed  within  a  few  years,  and  it 
established  the  type  and  set  the  tradition  which  all  subsequent 
cathedral  builders  followed.  First  came  the  cathedrals  of 

1  Baedeker’s  Guides  do  a  great  deal  of  harm  to  architecture,  being  entirely 
untrustworthy.  The  buildings  which  they  ask  the  public  to  admire  are 
those  which  are  very  old,  or  elaborate,  or  big,  or  because  of  some  historic 
association.  But  they  never  recommend  those  which  are  simply  beautiful 
and  do  not  come  into  any  of  their  other  categories.  Such  buildings  are 
ignored  by  them. 


The  Arts  of  the  Middle  Ages 


125 


Paris,  Chartres  and  Rouen,  and  later  the  celebrated  culmi¬ 
nating  group  of  Amiens,  Beauvais,  Bourges  and  Rheims,  which 
are  generally  regarded  as  the  high-water  mark  of  Gothic 
achievement. 

All  other  Gothic  architecture  derives  from  the  parent 

stock  of  France.  But  to  me  the  branches  are  more  interesting 

than  the  stem.  For  though  there  is  a  magnificence  and 

daring  about  French  Gothic,  and  though  we  are  indebted 

to  it  for  the  germ  ideas,  there  is  too  much  effort  about  it 

to  satisfy  my  taste  entirely.  It  lacks  the  sobriety  and 

reserve  of  the  Gothic  of  England,  Flanders,  and  Italy.  The 

brick  cathedrals  and  churches  of  Belgium  have  a  wonderfully 

fine  quality  about  them,  though  their  plastered  interiors 

are  entirely  devoid  of  interest.  Only  in  Italy  has  brickwork 

been  so  successfully  treated.  Gothic  never  took  root  properly 

in  Italy,  and  the  more  ambitious  attempts  at  it,  as  are  to 

be  seen  at  Orvieto  and  Milan  cathedrals,  are  dreadful  failures 

* 

so  far  as  the  exteriors  are  concerned.  But  the  simpler  forms 
of  Italian  Gothic  in  civil  and  domestic  work  and  in  some  of 
the  smaller  churches  are  exquisite  in  taste.  It  is  a  thousand 
pities  that  the  development  of  Gothic  in  Italy  should  have 
been  arrested  by  the  coming  of  the  Renaissance,  for  there 
are  unexplored  possibilities  in  it  which  may  prove  to  be 
the  germ  of  a  great  revival  some  day  in  Italy,  if  not  elsewhere. 

In  comparing  Gothic  with  other  styles  of  architecture, 
the  most  extraordinary  thing  is  that  Gothic  buildings,  which 
are  badly  proportioned  and  entirely  indefensible  from  a 
strict  architectural  standpoint,  have  a  way  of  looking  quaint 
and  interesting.  Take  the  case  of  the  belfry  at  Bruges, 
which  Mr.  Chesterton  once  said  was  like  a  swan  with  a  very 
long  neck.  The  tower  is  out  of  all  proportion  with  the  building, 
and  the  various  stages  of  it  are  out  of  proportion  with  each 
other  ;  it  was  added  to  from  time  to  time,  and  in  any  other 
style  of  architecture  a  building  so  badly  proportioned  would 
be  a  monstrosity.  Yet  there  is  a  charm  about  this  belfry 
which  it  is  impossible  to  deny,  and  if  we  seek  for  the  final 
cause  of  it,  I  think  we  shall  find  it  in  the  vagaries  of  craftsman¬ 
ship,  in  the  liberty  of  the  craftsman  who  was  part  of  a  great 
tradition. 


CHAPTER  IX 


THE  FRANCISCANS  AND  THE  RENAISSANCE 

The  stimulus  which  was  given  to  thought  and  discovery  in 
the  thirteenth  century  by  the  recovery  of  the  works  of  Aristotle 
was  the  beginning  of  an  awakened  interest  in  the  literature 
and  art  of  Paganism  which  culminated  in  that  many-sided 
movement  which  we  know  as  the  Renaissance.  The  move¬ 
ment  originated  in  Italy  and  spread  itself  over  France, 
England,  and  Germany.  It  is  the  turning-point  in  the  history 
of  Western  Europe  and  is  not  to  be  understood  if  it  is  regarded 
as  a  rebellion  against  Christianity;  for  in  its  origin  it  was 
nothing  of  the  kind,  but  a  reaction  against  the  perversion 
of  the  Christian  ideal  at  the  hands  of  the  Franciscans.  The 
Renaissance  was  at  the  same  time  a  continuation  of  and  a 
reaction  against  the  forces  which  St.  Francis  set  in  motion, 
while  only  in  a  secondary  sense  is  it  to  be  regarded  as  a 
reaction  against  the  scholasticism  of  the  Dominicans. 

In  order  to  see  the  Renaissance  in  its  proper  perspective, 
it  is  necessary  to  realize  the  significance  and  influence  of 
the  Franciscans  in  the  thirteenth  century.  They  stood  in 
the  same  relation  to  the  Middle  Ages  as  the  Socialist  Move¬ 
ment  does  to  the  modern  world,  in  that  the  Franciscans 
were  the  central  driving  force  which  created  the  issues  in 
morals  and  economics  which  occupied  the  thought  of  the 
Middle  Ages.  Moreover,  as  with  the  Socialist  Movement, 
the  problem  of  poverty  was  their  primary  concern,  but 
they  attacked  it  from  a  different  angle  and  by  a  different 
method.  They  did  not  approach  it  from  the  point  of  view 
of  economics,  though  their  activities  led  to  economic  dis¬ 
cussions,  but  from  the  point  of  view  of  human  brother¬ 
hood.  This  different  method  of  approach  was  due  partly 

to  the  fact  that  they  approached  it  as  Christians 

126* 


The  Franciscans  and  the  Renaissance  127 


appealing  to  Christians,  and  partly  because  in  the  Middle 
Ages  poverty  was  not  the  problem  it  is  to-day — some¬ 
thing  organic  with  the  structure  of  society — but  a  thing 
that  was  essentially  local  and  accidental.  It  did  not 
owe  its  existence  to  the  fact  that  society  was  organized 
on  a  basis  fundamentally  false  as  is  the  case  to-day,  but 
because  the  Mediaeval  organization,  good  as  it  was,  was 
not  co-extensive  with  society.  Poverty  existed  on  the 
fringes  of  society,  not  at  its  centres. 

The  problem  arose  as  a  consequence  of  the  development 
of  trade.  The  monastic  orders,  as  we  saw,  were  the  pioneers 
of  civilization  in  Western  Europe.  They  settled  down 
in  the  waste  places,  cleared  the  woods  and  drained  the 
swamps,  and  around  them  there  gradually  grew  up  the 
hamlets  and  towns  of  Mediaeval  Europe.  But  a  time  came 
when  new  towns  began  to  spring  up  to  meet  the  requirements 
of  trade,  and  in  the  new  mercantile  towns  of  Italy  and 
Southern  France  the  lower  grades  of  the  population  were 
woefully  neglected  by  the  secular  clergy,  and  in  consequence 
had  grown  up  wild  and  ignorant  of  every  form  of  religious 
worship  and  secular  instruction,  while  they  lived  in  poverty 
and  dirt.  It  was  against  such  ignorance  and  neglect  that 
the  Franciscans  resolved  to  fight,  and  it  was  in  order  that 
they  might  be  of  service  to  the  poor  that  they  sought  identity 
with  them  in  position  and  fortune.  This  was  the  origin 
of  the  gospel  of  poverty  that  they  taught,  and  which  by  the 
middle  of  the  thirteenth  century  their  zeal  and  militant 
spirit  had  carried  far  and  wide  over  Christendom  ;  for  they 
were  great  preachers.  But  while  they  were  a  force  in  all 
the  great  centres  of  Mediaeval  Europe,  they  were  excep¬ 
tionally  strong  in  their  home  in  Italy.  The  huge  churches 
built  for  them  without  piers  in  the  interior,  and  which  are 
found  all  over  Italy,  testify  to  the  large  crowds  to  which 
they  were  accustomed  to  preach.  But  with  the  success 
which  followed  them  there  came  a  perversion  of  their  original 
idea.  Poverty  as  taught  by  St.  Francis  was  a  means  to 
an  end.  It  was  recommended  to  his  followers  in  order  that 
they  might  be  of  service  to  the  poor.  But  after  a  time  this 
original  idea  tended  to  recede  into  the  background,  and  in 
time  poverty  came  to  be  looked  upon  as  the  essence  of 


128  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


religion.  When,  therefore,  the  excesses  of  this  ideal  began 
to  make  religious  life  impossible  for  all  except  the  very  poor, 
it  produced  the  inevitable  reaction.  An  influential  party 
among  the  Franciscans  sought  to  have  the  original  rule 
modified  in  order  to  bring  it  more  into  accord  with  the 
dictates  of  reason  and  experience.  But  in  this  effort  they 
were  obstinately  opposed  by  a  minority  in  the  Order  who 
refused  to  have  any  part  in  such  relaxations.  The  recrimina¬ 
tions  between  these  two  branches  of  the  Order  at  last  became 
so  bitter  that  appeal  was  made  to  the  Pope  to  judge  between 
them.  He  appointed  a  commission  of  cardinals  and  theolo¬ 
gians  to  inquire  into  the  issues  involved,  and  quite  reasonably 
gave  a  decision  in  favour  of  the  moderate  party.  But  this 
only  embittered  the  extreme  party,  who  now  denied  the 
authority  of  the  Pope  to  interfere  with  the  internal  discipline 
of  the  Order,  affirming  that  only  St.  Francis  could  undo  what 
St.  Francis  himself  had  bound  up.  From  attacking  the 
Pope  they  went  on  to  attack  the  wealthy  clergy,  maintaining 
that  wealth  was  incompatible  with  the  teachings  of  Christ, 
and  from  that  they  went  on  to  attack  the  institution  of 
property  as  such.  It  was  thus  that  the  split  in  the  Francis¬ 
cans  led  to  those  discussions  about  the  ethics  of  property 
which  occupied  so  much  of  the  thought  of  the  Mediaeval 
economists.  This  question,  studied  in  the  light  of  Aristotle, 
led  St.  Thomas  Aquinas  to  formulate  those  social  principles, 
which  became  accepted  as  the  standards  of  Catholic  ortho¬ 
doxy,  as  at  a  later  date  led  St.  Antonino  to  affirm  that 
“  poverty  is  not  a  good  thing  ;  in  itself  it  is  an  evil,  and  can 
be  considered  to  lead  only  accidentally  to  any  good.” 1 

Without  doubt  St.  Antonino  had  the  Franciscan  gospel 
of  poverty  in  mind  when  he  made  this  utterance.  He 
realized  the  terrible  evils  which  would  follow  the  divorce 
of  religion  from  everyday  life  if  an  ideal  beyond  the  capacity 
of  the  average  normal  man  were  insisted  upon.  Moreover, 
in  the  early  part  of  the  fourteenth  century  the  Franciscans 
themselves  had  fallen  from  their  high  estate.  It  is  a  fact 
of  pyschology  that  an  excess  of  idealism  will  be  followed  by 
a  fall  from  grace,  and  the  Franciscans  fell  very  low  indeed. 

1  St.  Antonino  and  Mediesval  Economics,  by  Bede  Jarrett  (The  Manresa 
Press) . 


The  Franciscans  and  the  Renaissance  129 


The  high  moral  plane  on  which  they  sought  to  live  was 
too  much  for  them.  The  moment  they  relaxed  from  their 
strenuous  activity  they  became  corrupted  by  the  degraded 
environment  in  which  they  found  themselves,  and  rapidly 
sank  to  that  depth  of  coarseness,  meanness,  and  sinfulness 
which  has  been  so  well  described  by  Chaucer.  The  once  popu¬ 
lar  Franciscans  now  became  objects  of  the  same  scorn  and 
ridicule  as  the  monks  of  the  Benedictine  and  Cistercian  Orders. 

We  saw  there  was  a  reaction  against  the  rule  of  St. 
Francis  within  the  Franciscan  Order.  There  was  now  to 
come  a  reaction  from  without,  and  the  immediate  form  it 
took  was  a  reassertion  of  those  very  things  which  St.  Francis 
forbade  his  followers — scholarship  and  the  world.  An 
insistence  upon  the  value  of  these  is  the  keynote  of  the 
Humanists  whose  labours  inaugurated  the  Renaissance. 
The  men  of  the  Early  Renaissance  were  not  opposed  to 
Christianity,  but  to  what  they  conceived  to  be  the  perversion 
of  its  ideal  at  the  hands  of  the  Franciscans.  Against  the 
Franciscan  conception  of  life  they  warred  incessantly.  Their 
enthusiasm  for  Pagan  literature  was  inspired  by  the  belief 
that  its  study  would  lead  to  a  fuller  understanding  of 
Christianity.  In  it  was  to  be  found  most  precious  material 
for  the  cultivation  of  the  mind  and  for  the  purification  of 
moral  life.  Its  popularization  would,  moreover,  tend  to 
restore  the  balance  between  the  religious  and  secular  sides 
of  life  which  the  exaggerated  teachings  of  the  Franciscans 
had  temporarily  upset.  They  had  no  sympathy  with  the  later 
Humanists  who  regarded  learning  as  an  end  in  itself.  On 
the  contrary,  classic  literature  was  by  them  only  valued  as 
a  means  to  an  end — the  end  being  the  Christian  life.  The 
position  was  not  a  new  one.  Classic  literature,  as  such,  had 
never  been  banned  by  the  Church.  Already  in  the  first 
centuries  of  Christianity  the  Fathers  of  the  Church  had 
pursued  and  advocated  the  study  of  the  literature  of  Greece 
and  Rome.  But  they  had  exercised  discrimination.  They 
recognized  that  while  many  classic  works  had  been  inspired 
by  lofty  sentiments,  such  was  not  by  any-  means  always  the 
case,  and  that  while  many  books  had  been  written  in  Pagan 
times  merely  to  extol  vice,  there  were  many  other  books 
which,  though  they  had  no  such  object,  might  be  used  by 

9 


130  A  Guildsmari s  Interpretation  of  History 


vicious-minded  persons  as  apologetics  for  vice,  and  so  dis¬ 
crimination  had  been  made.  The  classic  authors  who  were 
above  suspicion  were  taken  into  the  bosom  of  the  Church. 
St.  Augustine  had  based  his  theology  upon  the  Platonic 
philosophy.  The  Mneid  of  Virgil  came  to  be  looked  upon 
almost  as  a  sacred  book,  loved  and  honoured  as  much  by 
Christian  Fathers  as  by  Roman  scholars.  Virgil  had  re¬ 
mained  with  the  Church  all  through  the  Dark  Ages  and 
lived  to  inspire  the  Divina  Commedia  of  Dante  a  century 
and  a  half  before  the  Revival  of  Learning  was  inaugurated 
by  Petrarch.  All  through  this  period  great  value  was  set 
upon  such  classic  authors  as  the  Church  had  sanctioned  and 
had  survived  the  wreck  of  Roman  civilization.  The  Bene¬ 
dictines  preserved  in  their  monasteries  a  knowledge  of  the 
Latin  classics.  Virgil,  Horace,  Statius,  Sallust,  Terence, 
Cicero,  Quintilian,  Ovid,  Lucan,  Martial,  Caesar,  Livy  and 
Suetonius  were  known  and  studied  by  them.  But  though 
the  Latin  classics  and  the  Latin  language  were  never  wholly 
lost,  the  fortunes  of  the  Greek  classics  were  very  different. 
x\fter  the  fall  of  the  Western  Empire  in  the  fifth  century 
a  knowledge  of  classical  Greek  rapidly  faded  out  of  the 
West,  becoming  practically  extinct,  and  with  it  disappeared 
from  Western  Europe  any  knowledge  of  the  works  of  Plato, 
Aristotle  and  other  Greek  authors.  From  about  the  end 
of  the  tenth  century  a  knowledge  of  the  Latin  classics  began 
to  be  more  widely  diffused.  But  the  incipient  revival  of 
a  better  literary  taste  was  checked  at  the  beginning  of  the 
thirteenth  century  by  the  re-discovery  of  Aristotle  which 
was  followed  by  such  a  great  awakening  that  for  the  time 
being  he  came  to  monopolize  intellectual  interests  and  the 
Latin  classics  that  had  been  studied  before  Aristotle  came 
along  fell  into  neglect.  In  this  light  the  Revival  of  Learning 
appears  in  the  first  place  as  an  endeavour  to  take  up  the 
threads  of  the  Latin  culture  of  the  pre-Aristotelian  period 
of  a  hundred  years  before,  and  in  the  next  to  subject  them  to 
a  more  systematic  study.  In  another  later  and  quite  secon¬ 
dary  sense  it  became  a  movement  of  poets  or  men  of  letters 
against  philosophers.1  In  no  sense  can  the  Revival  of 

1  "  The  inveterate  quarrel,  which  is  as  old  as  Plato,  between  poets,  or 
men  of  letters,  and  philosophers  who  seek  wisdom  by  process  of  dialectic, 


The  Franciscans  and  the  Renaissance  131 


Learning  in  its  early  stages  be  regarded  as  a  rebellion  against 
Christianity.  The  early  Humanists  were  not  looked  upon 
as  dangerous  and  destructive  innovators.  Aristotle  had 
been  made  a  bulwark  against  heresy  by  the  efforts  of  Albertus 
Magnus  and  St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  and  at  the  time  there 
seemed  no  reason  to  suppose  that  the  study  of  other  authors 
of  antiquity  could  not  be  similarly  reconciled  and  incorpor¬ 
ated  in  the  Christian  theology.  This  spirit  of  reconciliation 
survived  through  the  greater  part  of  the  fifteenth  century, 
and  when,  after  the  fall  of  Constantinople  in  1453,  a  priceless 
cargo  of  Greek  manuscripts  arrived  in  Italy  together  with 
numerous  Greek  scholars,  Plato  was  studied  in  this  same 
spirit  of  reconciliation.  The  proof  that  the  Platonists  of 
the  Renaissance  were  genuinely  inspired  by  religious  motives 
is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  both  Marsilio  Ficino  and  Pico 
della  Mirandola  eventually  came  entirely  under  the  influence 
of  Savonarola.  Ficino  entered  the  Church.  Pico  burned 
his  love-poems,  decided  to  become  a  friar,  and  was  only 
prevented  by  death. 

Such  was  the  ideal  of  the  Early  Renaissance.  The 
changed  ideal  which  is  the  mark  of  the  Later  Renaissance 
is  to  be  accounted  for  by  a  growing  consciousness  on  the 
part  of  the  Humanists  of  the  ultimate  irreconcilibility 
between  the  Pagan  and  Christian  attitudes  towards  life, 
if  not  always  between  the  Pagan  and  Christian  philosophies. 
They  began  to  ask  themselves  the  question  whether  the 
Pagan  world  was  not  a  bigger,  broader  and  more  humane 
one  than  the  Christian  world  with  which  they  were 
familiar,  whether,  in  fact,  the  life  of  the  senses  which  Paganism 
avowed  was  not  the  life  which  it  was  intended  that  man  should 
live  and  whether  Christianity,  by  placing  restraints  upon  the 
natural  impulses  of  man,  had  not  frustrated  the  ends  of  life. 
In  an  earlier  age  under  other  circumstances  such  thoughts 
would  have  been  resisted  as  coming  from  the  Devil.  But 
they  did  not  appear  as  such  to  men  who  lived  in  an  atmo¬ 
sphere  of  intellectual  and  aesthetic  intoxication,  in  a  society 

must  not  be  overlooked  when  we  read  of  the  judgments  of  the  later  Humanists 
on  a  scholasticism  which  they  despised  without  always  understanding  it. 
To  them,  technical  terms  were  a  jargon  and  the  subtle  but  exquisite  dis¬ 
tinctions  of  Aquinas  spelt  barbarism  "  ( Cambridge  Modern  History,  vol.  i. 
P-  633). 


132  A  Guildsman’s  Interpretation  of  History 


in  which  the  recovery  of  the  remains  of  Greek  and  Roman 
Art  was  proving  a  new  source  of  guidance  and  inspiration. 

Now  it  is  important  to  recognize  that  the  ideas  with  which 
the  Humanists  had  now  become  familiar  fascinated  their 
minds  because  at  the  time  they  understood  neither  Paganism 
nor  Christianity.  On  the  one  hand  they  did  not  realize 
the  slough  of  despondency  into  which  Pagan  civilization  had 
fallen,  while  they  were  not  familiar  with  Christianity  as  it 
had  been  understood  at  an  earlier  age  but  with  its  perversion 
at  the  hands  of  the  Franciscans.  For  it  is  well  to  remember 
that  Christianity  had  never  denied  the  life  of  the  senses. 
The  doctrine  of  the  Resurrection  of  the  Body  is  an  eternal 
witness  to  that  fact.  For  it  was  formulated,  as  we  saw,  as  a 
means  of  combating  the  Manichean  heresy,  which  did  deny 
the  sensuous  life  of  man.  But  while  on  the  one  hand  Chris¬ 
tianity  thereby  acknowledged  “  that  in  any  final  con¬ 
summation  the  bodily  life  of  man  must  find  a  place  no 
less  than  the  spiritual,”  on  the  other  it  clearly  apprehended 
the  dangers  to  which  the  sensuous  life  of  man  was  exposed, 
affirming  that  the  exercise  of  restraint  alone  could  guarantee 
emotional  continuity.  Deprived  of  a  restraining  influence, 
man  rapidly  exhausts  his  emotional  capacity.  The  man 
who  is  for  ever  seeking  experience  and  expression,  because 
experience  and  expression  are  natural  to  the  healthy  normal 
man,  soon  becomes  emotionally  bankrupt.  He  becomes 
blase.  So  it  was  with  the  later  Humanists.  When  the 
spell  which  bound  them  to  Christian  beliefs  had  been  broken 
no  power  on  earth  could  stop  them  once  they  were  fairly 
embarked  on  the  pursuit  of  pleasure.  They  went  from  excess 
to  excess,  from  debauchery  to  debauchery  in  a  vain  search 
for  new  experiences,  while  they  took  especial  pleasure  in 
the  works  of  Petronius  and  the  other  disreputable  authors 
of  Antiquity  who  sought  to  make  vice  attractive.  Whatever 
else  these  later  Humanists  failed  to  do,  they  certainly  succeeded 
in  reviving  the  sensuality  and  epicureanism  of  Rome.  The 
Papacy,  which  had  become  associated  with  the  revival,  became 
a  veritable  centre  of  corruption.  When  the  young  Giovanni 
de  Medici  went  to  Rome  his  father  Lorenzo  warned  him  to 
beware  of  his  conduct  in  that  “  sink  of  iniquity/'  And 
the  warning  was  not  given  without  good  reason.  The  best- 


The  Franciscans  and  the  Renaissance  133 


known  Popes  between  the  years  1458-1522  were  all  more  or 
less  unscrupulous  evil-doers.  Sixtus  IV  was  an  accomplice 
in  the  plot  against  the  Medici  which  ended  in  the  murder  , 
of  Giuliano.  Alexander  VI  shows  an  almost  unparalleled 
record  of  crimes.  In  this  society  poison  became  a  fine  art, 
simony  and  theft  everyday  occurrences,  and  where  the 
Popes  led,  the  cardinals  followed.  Alexander’s  illegitimate 
son,  Caesar  Borgia,  chief  among  them,  was  the  hero  of  Machi- 
avelli.  If  these  monsters  had  lived  in  the  Middle  Ages, 
we  should  never  have  heard  the  last  of  them.  A  record 
of  their  crimes  would  have  been  considered  an  indispensable 
part  of  every  child’s  education.  But,  as  it  is,  their  story 
is  reserved  for  the  few,  while  they  are  treated  with  a 
certain  curiosity,  not  to  say  indulgence,  as  patrons  of 
culture. 

What  happened  to  religion  happened  to  the  arts.  The 
ideas  of  the  Renaissance  were  in  each  case  their  destruction. 
The  spirit  of  reconciliation  which  was  characteristic  of  the 
thought  of  the  Early  Renaissance  is  reflected  in  the  arts  of 
the  period.  This  is  especially  true  of  the  Italian  architecture 
and  the  painting  and  sculpture  of  the  fifteenth  century, 
which  is  Gothic  in  spirit  and  general  conception  combined 
with  details  derived  from  the  study  of  Roman  work.  In 
the  work  of  this  period  the  Gothic  and  Roman  elements  are 
always  present,  and  the  blend  is  exquisite.  But  this  great 
moment  of  transition  did  not  last  for  long.  The  Gothic 
element  begins  to  disappear,  and  with  the  arrival  of  Michel¬ 
angelo  it  is  entirely  eliminated.  The  decline  begins  to  set 
in,  for  Michelangelo  introduced  a  manner  which  proved 
fatal  to  all  the  arts.  That  delight  in  natural  objects,  in 
flowers  and  birds,  in  quaint  things  and  queer  things,  which 
is  so  peculiar  to  Gothic  art,  which  probably  owes  its  origin 
to  the  influence  of  St.  Francis  and  which  made  the  arts  of 
the  Middle  Ages  so  democratic  in  their  expression,  is  now 
no  more.  Michelangelo  eliminated  everything  that  gave  to 
art  its  human  interest  and  concentrated  attention  entirely 
upon  abstract  form.  In  the  hands  of  a  great  master  such  a 
treatment  of  art  is  great,  though  cold  and  austere,  but  in 
the  hands  of  lesser  men  it  became  ridiculous,  for  the  manner 
of  Michelangelo  was  just  as  much  beyond  the  capacity  of 


134  A  Guildsmari’s  Interpretation  of  History 


the  average  artist  and  craftsmen  as  the  life  of  poverty  which 
St.  Francis  recommended  to  his  followers  was  normally 
beyond  the  capacity  of  the  ordinary  man.  And  Michelangelo 
set  the  fashion  in  all  the  arts.  Mediaeval  sculpture  was 
rich  in  decorative  detail,  but  after  Michelangelo  sculpture 
became  identified  with  the  nude.  Mediaeval  painting  was 
rich  in  design  and  colour,  but  after  Michelangelo  its  primary 
concern  is  with  light  and  shade.  Paradoxically,  Michelangelo 
introduced  the  very  opposite  principle  into  the  treatment 
of  architecture.  For  he  does  not  simplify,  but  elaborates 
it.  Prior  to  Michelangelo  architecture  was  simple  in  its 
treatment,  while  elaboration  was  confined  to  the  decorative 
crafts,  but  now,  having  robbed  painting  and  sculpture  of 
their  decorative  qualities,  he  sought  to  obtain  the  contrasts 
he  required  by  making  architecture  itself  a  decorative  thing. 
This  he  did  by  multiplying  the  number  of  its  mechanical 
parts.  Michelangelo  disregarded  altogether  the  structural 
basis  of  architectural  design,  and  in  his  hands  architecture 
became  a  mere  theatrical  exhibition  of  columns,  pilasters, 
pediments,  etc.  Thus  he  inaugurated  that  evil  tradition 
in  which  architecture  and  building  are  divorced,  against 
which  we  fight  in  vain  to  this  day. 

But  Michelangelo  was  not  the  only  cause  of  the  decline. 
Architecture  might  have  survived  the  introduction  of  his 
mannerisms  had  it  not  been  that  in  the  sixteenth  century 
the  works  of  Vitruvius  were  unearthed.  He  had  reduced 
Roman  architecture  to  a  system  of  external  rules  and  pro¬ 
portions  and  his  re-discovery  was  the  greatest  misfortune 
which  ever  befell  architecture.  Though  Vitruvius  was  a 
very  inferior  architect,  absurd  homage  was  paid  to  him 
because  he  happened  to  be  the  only  architectural  writer 
whose  works  were  preserved  from  antiquity.  He  was  exalted 
by  the  architects  of  the  time  as  a  most  certain  and  infallible 
guide  as  to  what  was  and  what  was  not  a  proper  proportion. 
We  know  from  the  writings  of  Serlio,  an  architect  of  the  period 
who  did  much  to  establish  the  reputation  of  Vitruvius, 
that  the  craftsmen  of  the  time  objected  to  the  pedantic 
idea  that  only  one  set  of  proportions  was  allowable  ;  that 
there  was  one  way  of  doing  things  and  no  other,  and  in  a 
couple  of  pamphlets  written  by  two  German  master  builders 


The  Franciscans  and  the  Renaissance  135 


of  the  time,  Matthew  Boritzer  and  Lawrence  Lacher  1  protests 
are  made  against  this  new  way  of  regarding  architecture, 
and  they  insist  that  the  highest  art  is  the  result  of  inward 
laws  controlling  the  outward  form.  But  such  protests 
availed  nothing  against  the  pedantry  of  the  architects, 
w'hose  prestige  enabled  them  to  get  their  own  way  in  spite 
of  the  objections  from  the  building  trade.  Henceforth  there 
is  an  increasing  insistence  everywhere  upon  Roman  precedents 
in  design,  and  care  is  given  to  the  secondary  details,  while 
the  fundamental  ideas  of  plan  and  grouping  are  overtaken 
by  paralysis.  Architecture,  from  being  something  vital 
and  organic  in  the  nature  of  a  growth,  became  a  matter  of 
external  rules  and  proportions,  applied  more  or  less  indiffer¬ 
ently  to  any  type  of  building,  quite  regardless  either  of 
internal  convenience  or  structural  necessity.  When  this 
point  of  development  was  reached,  any  co-operation  among 
the  crafts  and  arts  which  had  survived  from  the  Middle  Ages 
came  to  an  end.  Henceforth  painting  and  sculpture  became 
entirely  separated  from  architecture  and  continued  an  inde¬ 
pendent  existence  in  studios  and  galleries,  while  the  minor 
crafts  degenerated  solely  into  matters  of  trade  and  commerce. 

The  growth  of  pedantry  in  architecture  was  assisted  by 
a  change  in  the  organization  of  the  crafts  which  followed 
the  introduction  of  Renaissance  ideas.  In  the  Middle  Ages 
it  was,  as  we  saw,  the  custom  for  craftsmen  to  supply  their 
own  designs,  and  if  every  craftsman  were  not  a  designer, 
at  any  rate  every  designer  was  a  craftsman.  But  with  the 
revival  of  Roman  ideas  of  design  there  came  into  existence 
a  caste  of  architects  and  designers  over  and  above  the 
craftsmen  of  the  building  trades,  who  supplied  designs  which 
the  craftsmen  carried  into  execution.  At  first  these  architects 
had  to  proceed  very  warily,  for  the  craftsmen  did  not  seem 
to  care  very  much  about  this  new  arrangement.  Thus  we 
read  that  Sir  Christopher  Wren,  when  sending  his  small- 
scale  plans  and  directions  for  the  library  at  Trinity  College, 
Cambridge,  adds :  “I  suppose  you  have  good  masons ; 
however,  I  would  willingly  take  a  further  pains  to  give  all 
the  mouldings  in  great  ;  we  are  scrupulous  in  small  matters, 
and  you  must  pardon  us,  the  architects  are  as  great  pedants 

1  Janssen,  vol  i.  p.  167-8. 


136  A  Guildsmarfs  Interpretation  of  History 


as  critics  and  heralds.”  This  letter  is  interesting,  not  only 
because  it  testifies  to  the  existence  of  trained  schools  of 
masons  and  carpenters  who  had  their  own  traditions  of 
design  and  could  be  trusted  to  apply  them,  but  to  the  growing 
spirit  of  pedantry  which  proved  to  be  the  death  of  architecture. 
So  long  as  architecture  had  its  roots  firmly  in  the  crafts  such 
a  development  was  impossible.  But  with  the  separation 
of  the  functions  of  design  and  execution  and  the  rise  of  a 
school  of  architects  who  were  proud  of  their  scholarly  attain¬ 
ments,  pedantry  grew  apace.  The  craftsman,  compelled 
to  execute  designs  made  by  others,  gradually  lost  his  faculty 
of  design,  while  the  architect,  deprived  of  the  suggestion  in 
design  which  the  actual  handling  of  material  gives,  naturally 
fell  back  more  and  more  upon  Roman  precedent,  until, 
finally,  all  power  of  invention  in  design  came  to  an  end 
and  architecture  expired  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
Since  then  a  succession  of  revivals  have  been  attempted 
which  have  succeeded  in  producing  a  certain  number  of 
interesting  buildings  but  not  in  effecting  a  general  revival 
of  architecture. 

Fortunately  during  this  period  of  decline,  architects 
were  few  in  number,  and  were  only  employed  on  the  most 
expensive  work.  The  great  mass  of  building  was  designed, 
as  well  as  executed,  by  builders.  While  the  architects  were 
engaged  in  producing  those  monstrous  platitudes  in  the 
“  grand  manner,”  known  as  monumental  architecture, 
these  builders  were  engaged  in  the  development  of  a  style 
of  work  which  carried  on  the  vigorous  traditions  of  Gothic 
craftsmanship,  while  it  made  use  of  such  Roman  forms  as 
could  readily  be  assimilated.  This  vernacular  architecture, 
which  in  this  country  we  know  by  the  names  of  Elizabethan, 
Jacobean,  Queen  Anne  and  Georgian,  is  the  really  genuine 
architecture  of  the  Renaissance  period,  and  it  reacted  to 
give  the  architects  an  endowment  of  traditional  English 
taste  which  kept  the  academic  tendencies  of  the  Renais¬ 
sance  within  certain  bounds.  But  in  the  latter  half  of  the 
eighteenth  century  the  pedantic  ideas  of  the  architects,  owing 
to  the  prestige  of  London,  became  enforced  as  stringent 
standards  over  the  whole  country,  and  this  vernacular 
architecture  came  to  an  end. 


The  Franciscans  and  the  Renaissance  137 


While  thus  we  see  the  Renaissance  ended  by  destroying 
communal  traditions  in  the  arts,  it  destroyed  also  the  com¬ 
munal  traditions  of  culture  of  the  Middle  Ages.  This  culture, 
which  had  its  basis  in  common  religious  ideas,  was  a  human 
thing  to  the  extent  that  it  was  capable  of  binding  king  and 
peasant,  priest  and  craftsman  together  in  a  common  bond 
of  sympathy  and  understanding.  It  was,  moreover,  a  culture 
which  came  to  a  man  at  his  work.  The  mason  who  carved 
ornaments  of  some  chapel  or  cathedral  drew  his  inspiration 
from  the  same  source  of  religious  tradition  as  the  ploughman 
who  sang  as  he  worked  in  the  field  or  the  minstrel  who 
chanted  a  song  in  the  evening.  It  was  a  part  of  the  environ¬ 
ment  in  which  every  man  lived.  But  the  later  Renaissance 
had  no  sympathy  with  culture  of  this  kind.  It  could  not 
understand  craft  culture.  To  it  culture  was  primarily  a 
matter  of  books.  It  became  a  purely  intellectual  affair, 
whose  standards  were  critical,  and,  as  such,  instead 
of  operating  to  bind  the  various  classes  of  the  com¬ 
munity  together,  it  raised  a  barrier  between  the  many 
and  the  few.  There  is  no  escape  from  this  state  of 
things  so  long  as  culture  remains  on  a  purely  intellectual 
basis,  for  a  time  will  never  arrive  when  the  majority  in  any 
class  are  vitally  interested  in  intellectual  pursuits.  Mediaeval 
culture  did  not  expect  them  to  be.  It  accepted  differences 
among  men  as  irrevocable,  but  it  knew  at  the  same  time 
that  all  men  had  certain  human  interests  in  common,  and 
it  built  up  a  culture  to  preserve  them. 

In  the  place  of  a  communal  culture,  the  Renaissance 
promoted  the  cult  of  the  individual.  Its  history  bristles 
with  the  names  of  brilliant  men  who  seem  almost  to  be  ends 
in  themselves.  They  have  all  the  appearance  of  being  great 
creators,  but  when  we  examine  them  more  closely  we  see 
they  are  the  great  destroyers.  For  their  greatness  is  not 
their  own.  They  were  men  who  inherited  great  traditions, 
which  they  thoughtlessly  destroyed,  much  in  the  same  way 
as  a  spendthrift  squanders  the  fortune  to  which  he  succeeds. 
But  while  the  Renaissance  destroyed  the  great  traditions,  it 
could  put  nothing  in  their  place,  for  its  facile  half-success 
left  it  ultimately  impotent,  and  if  we  search  for  the  final 
cause  of  this  failure,  I  think  we  shall  find  it  in  this — that 


138  A  GuildsmarCs  Interpretation  of  History 


it  valued  means  rather  than  ends.  It  concentrated  its  energy 
upon  science  and  criticism,  but  for  what  ends  it  knew  not. 
These,  it  assumed,  might  be  left  to  take  care  of  themselves. 
And  so  it  remained  without  a  rudder  to  steer  by  or  a  goal 
at  which  to  aim.  Science  and  criticism  may  be  constructive, 
but  only  when  used  by  men  with  well-defined  ends  in  view. 
But  men  of  this  type  believe  in  dogmas,  which  the  men  of 
the  Renaissance  did  not.  Such  men  realize  that  if  criticism 
has  any  validity  in  society  it  can  only  be  on  the  assumption 
that  it  is  in  search  of  final  and  definite  conclusions  ;  that  if 
it  seeks  to  destroy  one  set  of  dogmas  it  does  so  in  order  to 
create  others.  But  the  men  of  the  Renaissance  did  not 
understand  this.  They  valued  criticism  for  the  sake  of 
criticism,  not  for  the  sake  of  truth  but  for  the  love  of  destruc¬ 
tion.  They  never  understood  that  the  final  object  and  justi¬ 
fication  of  criticism  is  that  it  destroys  the  need  of  criticism  ; 
that  the  final  aim  and  object  of  free  thought  should  be  the 
re-establishment  of  dogmas. 


CHAPTER  X 


THE  REFORMATION  IN  GERMANY 

Though  the  Reformation  may  be  regarded  at  once  as  a 
development  and  a  reaction  against  the  Renaissance,  it 
had  yet  at  the  same  time  roots  of  its  own.  Though  it  broke 
out  in  the  sixteenth  century  in  Germany,  its  intellectual 
foundations  were  laid  in  the  fourteenth  century  in  England 
by  Wycliffe — "  the  Morning  Star  of  the  Reformation  ”  as 
he  is  called.  His  ideas  were  carried  all  over  Europe  by 
wandering  scholars.  He  was  the  inspirer  of  the  Hussite 
Movement  in  Bohemia  as  well  as  of  the  leading  men  in  the 
Reformation. 

Wycliffe  was  no  Catholic,  but  a  religious  pervert.  He 
had  no  conception  of  the  function  of  religion  in  its  broadest 
and  most  catholic  sense  as  an  instrument  which  maintained 
the  common  life  by  securing  the  acceptance  of  certain  beliefs 
and  standards  of  thought  and  morals  by  the  whole  people 
and  thus  maintaining  the  Kingdom  of  God  upon  Earth. 
On  the  contrar}^,  his  attitude  towards  religion  was  a  very 
narrow,  self-regarding  and  personal  one.  He  was  concerned 
with  the  need  of  a  man  saving  his  own  individual  soul, 
and  his  teaching  was  a  perversion  of  the  whole  idea  of  Chris¬ 
tianity.  If  we  keep  steadily  in  our  mind  that  the  central 
aim  of  Christianity  is  to  maintain  the  common  life,  it 
becomes  apparent  that  the  primary  object  of  the  priest  is  the 
maintenance  of  a  common  standard  of  thought  and  morals. 
A  man  by  his  words  may  secure  respect  for  them,  though 
in  his  individual  life  he  may  fall  short  of  their  fulfilment. 
But  Wycliffe,  viewing  the  corruption  of  the  clergy  of  his  day, 
laid  down  the  dictum  that  only  a  priest  who  is  himself 
without  sin  can  preach  the  word  of  God.  Though  a 
corrupt  clergy  is  to  be  deplored,  it  becomes  evident 


140  A  Guildsmari’s  Interpretation  of  History 


that  the  remedy  of  Wycliffe  is  worse  than  the  disease,  inas¬ 
much  as  it  denies  the  humanity  of  the  priest.  Insistence 
upon  such  a  standard  demands  that  a  priest,  instead  of, 
as  heretofore,  being  acknowledged  a  sinner  like  other  men, 
must  be  a  superior  person.  Thus  he  will,  knowing  himself 
to  be  a  sinner,  become  a  hypocrite  in  the  eyes  of  the  world, 
or,  what  is  far  worse,  he  will  become  a  prig,  committing  the 
most  deadly  of  all  sins,  that  of  spiritual  pride,  and  endeavour 
to  make  his  own  conduct  the  standard  of  truth  and  morals. 

This  constituted  the  central  heresy  of  Wycliffe.  All 
the  rest  flowed  from  it.  Wycliffe  himself  was  a  prig  of  the 
first  order  ;  his  self-sufficiency  was  intolerable.  It  was  the 
elect,  he  taught,  who  constituted  the  community  of  saints — 
the  community  of  God  or  the  true  Church.  According  to 
him,  the  Church  consisted  of  all  true  believers  who  had  access 
to  the  Divine  mercy,  who  approached  God  by  their  own 
prayers  without  the  intervention  of  a  priestly  mediator, 
and  who  were  to  interpret  the  Scriptures  according  to  the 
dictates  of  their  consciences.  For  by  making  the  Scriptures 
rather  than  the  traditions  of  the  Church  the  final  authority 
Wycliffe  made  personal  opinion  the  final  test  of  truth.  In 
other  words,  the  Church  consisted  not  of  the  hierarchy  and 
the  people  but  of  all  the  prigs  and  self-elected  saints  whose 
standard  of  self-righteousness  was  henceforth  to  become 
the  standard  of  conduct  and  morals.  Wycliffe  was  the  first 
of  the  Puritans. 

In  the  ordinary  course  of  events,  Wycliffe  would  have 
suffered  death  as  a  heretic,  but  like  all  the  self-righteous 
Puritancial  crowd  he  had  in  his  composition  a  streak  of 
worldly  wisdom.  He  took  care  that  his  new  gospel  would 
be  acceptable  to  the  hierarchy  of  the  State  if  not  to  that 
of  the  Church,  and  made  his  position  safe  by  securing  the 
protection  of  John  of  Gaunt,  whose  personal  conduct  inci¬ 
dentally  was  anything  but  pure.  The  corruption  of  the 
clergy,  Wycliffe  maintained,  could  be  traced  to  their  excessive 
■wealth.  It  was  essential,  therefore,  to  the  promotion  of  the 
higher  life  in  the  community  that  the  clergy  should  be  reduced. 
Hence  it  was  Wycliffe  advised  the  confiscation  of  the  Church 
lands  by  the  State.  That  the  State  itself  was  more  corrupt 
than  the  Church,  that  in  the  hands  of  the  lawyers  who  were 


The  Reformation  in  Germany 


141 


now  controlling  it  the  State  had  become  a  shameless  instru¬ 
ment  of  class  oppression  which  was  for  its  own  ends  dispos¬ 
sessing  the  peasants  of  their  lands,  did  not  deter  Wycliffe 
from  proposing  a  measure  which  would  increase  enormously 
the  power  which  was  so  unscrupulously  used.  Such  larger 
issues  did  not  interest  him.  As  to  how  the  peasants  were 
likely  to  fare  under  his  new  regime  he  never,  apparently, 
gave  a  moment’s  thought.  He  was  not  concerned  with  the 
well-being  of  the  people,  but  with  the  creation  of  a  race  of 
self-righteous  plaster  saints  to  replace  the  hierarchy  of  the 
Church. 

Such  was  the  fundamental  heresy  of  Wycliffe  which  bore 
fruit  a  thousand-fold  when  the  Reformation  broke  over 
Europe.  Immediately,  the  Reformation  owed  its  inception 
to  the  protest  of  Luther  against  the  corruption  of  the  Papacy 
which  had  come  about  as  a  consequence  of  the  revival  of 
Pagan  thought  and  morals.  In  the  year  1510,  Luther 
visited  Rome  on  business  connected  with  his  monastic  order, 
and  was  deeply  moved  at  the  irreligion  and  corruption  of 
the  Papal  Court.  Seven  years  after  this  visit  he  took  up 
a  stand  against  the  sale  of  Indulgences,  by  which  at  the  time 
Leo  X  was  seeking  to  raise  money  for  the  completion  of 
St.  Peter’s  at  Rome,  in  the  belief  that  the  abuses  attending 
their  sale  were  the  main  source  of  corruption.  On  the  1st 
of  November,  1517,  he  nailed  to  the  doors  of  the  Castle 
Church  at  Wittenberg  his  famous  thesis  of  ninety-five 
propositions  against  the  sale  of  Indulgences.  The  nailing 
of  theses  to  the  doors  of  churches  was  in  the  Middle  Ages 
an  ordinary  academic  procedure,  and  according  to  the  usage 
of  the  times  the  author  was  not  supposed  to  be  definitely 
committed  to  the  opinions  he  had  expressed.  But  it  was 
apparent  that  Luther  did  not  intend  the  debate  to  be  an 
ordinary  academic  one,  for  he  had  carefully  chosen  the  day 
on  which  to  nail  up  his  thesis.  For  the  1st  of  November 
was  All  Saints’  Day.  It  was  the  anniversary  of  the  conse¬ 
cration  of  the  church  and  was  commemorated  by  a  long 
series  of  service,  while  the  benefits  of  an  Indulgence  were 
secured  for  all  who  took  part  in  them.  It  was  the  day  when 
the  largest  concourse  of  townsmen  and  strangers  might  be 
expected,  and  would  therefore  ensure  a  wide  reading  of 


142  A  Guildsmari’s  Interpretation  of  History 


his  thesis,  nor  was  he  disappointed  with  the  result.  He  had 
raised  a  question  in  which  there  happened  to  be  widespread 
interest.  The  printers  could  not  produce  copies  of  this 
thesis  fast  enough  to  meet  the  demand  which  came  from 
all  parts  of  Germany. 

Now  why  was  it  that  Luther’s  act  had  immediately  such 
marvellous  practical  results  ?  The  answer  is  because  it  had 
become  widely  recognized  that  the  abuse  of  Indulgences  was 
a  fruitful  source  of  the  corruption  of  the  ecclesiastical 
organization.  It  is  impossible  here  properly  to  discuss  this 
question,  not  only  because  it  is  very  involved,  but  because 
the  theory  on  which  Indulgences  rest  is  entirely  unintelligible 
from  a  purely  rational  or  ethical  standpoint.  It  may,  however, 
be  said  that  Mediaeval  theology  did  not  create  Indulgences  ; 
it  only  followed  and  tried  to  justify  the  practices  of  the 
Popes  and  the  Roman  Curia.  They  originated  in  the  early 
days  of  the  Church.  Serious  sins  involved  separation  from 
the  fellowship  of  Christians,  and  readmission  to  the  com¬ 
munion  was  dependent  not  merely  upon  public  confession 
but  also  on  the  manifestation  of  a  true  repentance  by  the 
performance  of  certain  satisfactions ,  such  as  the  manu¬ 
mission  of  slaves,  prolonged  fastings,  extensive  almsgivings  ; 
which  were  works  acceptable  to  God  and  gave  outward 
and  visible  proof  that  the  penitent  really  desired  to  be 
received  again  into  the  fold,.  In  course  of  time  public 
confessions  became  private  confessions  to  a  priest,  and  there 
grew  up  a  system  of  penances  proportionate  to  the  sins. 
In  the  seventh  century  these,  under  certain  circumstances, 
became  commuted  for  money  payments,  and  so  little  by 
little  the  inward  meaning  receded  into  the  background 
while  greater  importance  became  attached  to  the  outward 
acts  until,  under  the  direction  of  the  Renaissance  Popes, 
Indulgences  had  degenerated  into  purely  commercial  tran¬ 
sactions.  They  had  been  abused  everywhere,  but  particu¬ 
larly  in  Germany,  for  Germany  during  the  Middle  Ages 
was  the  richest  country  in  Europe  and  as  such  had 
become  the  usual  resource  of  a  Pope  in  financial  straits. 
So  long  as  the  sale  of  Indulgences  was  limited  and  only 
made  use  of  in  exceptional  circumstances,  nobody  thought 
of  objecting.  But  the  authority  of  the  Holy  See  had 


The  Reformation  in  Germany 


143 


been  severely  shaken  by  the  Great  Schism — for  the 
spectacle  of  two,  and  at  one  time  three,  Popes  claiming 
the  allegiance  of  Christendom,  whilst  hurling  anathemas  at 
each  other,  was  anything  but  an  edifying  one.  Moreover, 
the  Popes  of  the  Renaissance  in  their  pursuit  of  temporal 
power  had  to  all  intents  and  purposes  become  secular  princes, 
using  religion  merely  as  an  instrument  for  the  furtherance 
of  their  political  ambitions.  These  Popes  greatly  increased 
the  sale  of  Indulgences  and  raised  tithes  and  annates  under 
the  pretext  of  war  against  the  Turks,  though  no  expeditions 
were  sent  forth  and  the  money  collected  was  spent  upon 
other  objects.  When  news  of  the  corruption  of  the  Papacy 
had  been  noised  abroad  and  the  clergy  of  Germany  found, 
as  they  asserted  in  a  petition  presented  to  the  Emperor-elect, 
Maximilian,  in  1510,  that  the  Papacy  could  be  restrained 
by  no  agreements  or  conventions  seeing  that  it  granted 
dispensations,  suspensions,  and  revocations  for  the  vilest 
persons  while  employing  other  devices  for  nullifying  its 
promises  and  evading  its  own  wholesome  regulations,  a  time 
came  when  numberless  people  began  to  ask  themselves 
whether  the  Papacy  was  entitled  to  the  allegiance  that  it 
claimed  and  in  what  sense  the  Popes  were  to  be  considered 
the  successors  of  St.  Peter.  All  efforts  at  reform  having 
failed,  the  only  remedy  lay  in  revolution,  and  Germany  was 
ready  for  the  signal.  In  1521  the  Nuncio  Alexander  wrote 
“  that  five  years  before  he  had  mentioned  to  Pope  Leo 
his  dread  of  a  German  uprising,  he  had  heard  from  many 
Germans  that  they  were  only  waiting  for  some  fool  to  open 
his  mouth  against  Rome.”  1 

The  immediate  popularity  of  Luther’s  protest,  then,  was 
not  due  to  any  desire  for  doctrinal  reform  but  because  he 
stood  for  opposition  to  Rome.  The  doctrinal  changes 
associated  with  his  name  were  largely  improvised  dogmas 
called  into  existence  by  the  desire  to  combat  Papal  pretensions, 
for  he  was  a  man  of  action  rather  than  a  careful  and  logical 
thinker  and  only  stated  an  abstract  position  when  he  was 
driven  to  it.  The  original  idea  of  the  Church  had  been 
that  of  salvation  by  faith  and  good  works.  But  when 
Christianity  triumphed  and  everybody  was  born  a  Christian, 

1  Cambridge  Modern  History,  vol.  i.  p.  690. 


144  A  Guildsmari’s  Interpretation  of  History 


the  faith  came  to  be  taken  more  or  less  for  granted  and 
emphasis  was  put  more  and  more  upon  good  works,  as  being 
the  mark  of  a  good  Christian  life.  It  was  among  other 
things  the  emphasis  which  had  been  almost  entirely  placed 
upon  good  works  that  led  to  the  abuse  of  Indulgences. 
Luther  attacked  this  external  idea  of  Christianity.  He 
had  told  an  assembly  of  clergy  who  met  at  Leitzkau  in  1512 
to  discuss  the  reform  of  the  Church  that  reformation  must 
begin  with  the  individual  and  involved  a  change  of  heart. 
The  penitence  which  Christ  required  was  something  more 
than  a  momentary  expression  of  sorrow.  Hence  his  cardinal 
dogma  of  justification  by  faith.  No  Christian,  I  imagine, 
Catholic  or  Protestant,  would  object  to  what  he  meant  by 
this.  For  though  he  maintained  that  good  works  were  not 
sufficient,  it  is  to  be  supposed  that  he  meant  salvation  by 
faith  and  good  works.  But  he  did  not  say  this,  and  the 
result  was  the  Reformation  produced  results  very  different 
from  what  he  had  intended.  Under  Protestantism,  stress 
came  to  be  laid  entirely  upon  questions  of  faith  to  the 
exclusion  of  good  works,  and  morals  accommodated  them¬ 
selves  to  the  practice  of  the  rich.  To  understand  exactly 
why  this  came  about  we  must  consider  the  changes  which 
Luther  introduced  into  Church  government.  Like  his  doc¬ 
trinal  changes,  they  had  their  origin  in  political  expediency. 

The  immediate  success  of  Luther  I  said  was  due  to  the 
fact  that  he  stood  for  opposition  to  Rome.  Of  that  there 
can  be  no  doubt  whatsoever.  But  a  question  arises  out  of 
it  that  needs  to  be  answered.  If  the  Reformation,  so  far 
as  the  majority  were  concerned,  was  inspired  by  opposition 
to  Rome,  how  was  it  that  the  movement  did  not  take  the 
form  of  a  mere  separation  of  the  Church  from  Rome  as  in 
the  first  place  it  did  in  England  ?  The  answer  is  that  the 
political  condition  of  Germany  made  that  impossible.  From 
the  date  when  the  revival  of  Roman  Law  led  the  Emperors 
to  attempt  to  control  the  Papacy,  it  had  been  the  consistent 
policy  of  Rome  to  cripple  the  Empire  by  encouraging  the 
congeries  of  sovereign  princes  to  assert  their  independence 
against  the  Emperors.  The  result  of  this  policy  was  that 
the  power  of  the  Emperor  was  only  nominal.  In  reality 
it  did  not  exist.  Consequently  in  Germany  there  could 


The  Reformation  in  Germany 


145 


be  no  appeal  from  the  authority  of  the  Pope  to  the  authority 
of  State,  but  only  an  appeal  from  the  Pope  to  the  people ; 
that  is,  to  the  community  of  believers.  Hence  it  came  about 
that  when  at  the  Diet  of  Worms  (1521)  Luther  maintained 
that  Popes  and  Councils  might  err,  in  the  absence  of  the 
support  of  the  Emperor  he  was  in  the  position  of  having 
either  to  retract  or  to  appeal  to  the  people.  Having  taken 
this  step,  certain  consequences  logically  followed  from  it. 
In  appealing  to  the  people  he  not  only  made  their  authority 
supreme  in  matters  of  Church  government,  but  in  the 
interpretation  of  the  Scriptures  ;  a  development  which  was 
made  possible  by  the  recent  invention  of  printing.  This 
was  fatal  for  the  ends  he  had  in  view,  because  it  entirely 
destroyed  the  value  of  religion  as  a  social  force  capable  of 
binding  men  together,  because  if  each  individual  is  to  interpret 
the  Scriptures,  their  meaning  becomes  a  matter  of  opinion, 
in  the  light  of  which  every  man  is  a  law  unto  himself. 
For  if  truth  is  declared  to  be  subjective,  it  is  impossible  to 
insist  upon  a  moral  standard  which  is  necessarily  objective. 
Luther  was  not  long  in  finding  these  things  out,  though  he 
would  never  admit  to  himself  that  he  could  possibly  be 
wrong.  The  doubts  and  qualms  of  conscience  which  in 
later  life  he  had  with  regard  to  the  correctness  of  his  course 
of  action  he  ascribed  to  the  suggestion  of  the  evil  spirit. 
Often  at  the  beginning  of  his  crusade  Luther  had  expressed 
the  confident  expectation  that  his  gospel  would  exercise 
a  beneficent  influence  both  morally  and  religiously.  But  he 
was  terribly  disappointed.  It  was  not  long  before  he  was 
driven  to  acknowledge  that  things  had  grown  seven  times 
worse  than  before.  “  People,”  he  said,  “  after  hearing  the 
Gospel  steal,  lie,  drink,  gluttonize,  and  indulge  in  all  sorts 
of  vice.  Drunkenness  has  come  upon  us  like  a  flood  and 
swamped  everything.”  1  He  deplored,  too,  the  growing  insub¬ 
ordination  especially  of  the  rising  generation,  but  his  words 
fell  upon  deaf  ears.  Writing  of  the  change  which  followed 
the  transfer  of  authority  from  the  hands  of  the  priests  to 
those  of  the  laity,  Erasmus  said  :  “  The  people  will  not  listen 
to  their  own  ministers  when  the  latter  do  not  tickle  their 
ears  ;  on  the  contrary,  these  unhappy  preachers  must  straight- 


1  Janssen,  vol.  iv.  p. 

10 


150. 


f 

146  A  Guildsmaris  Interpretation  of  History 

way  be  sent  about  their  business  the  moment  that  they 
show  any  frankness,  and  presume  to  question  the  conduct 
of  their  hearers/’  In  a  letter  to  Luther  in  1524  he  wrote  : 
“  I  see  that  these  innovations  are  producing  shoals  of 
turbulent  good-for-nothing  people,  and  I  dread  a  bloody 
insurrection/’  1 

The  trouble  then,  I  incline  to  think,  was  very  much  like 
the  trouble  at  the  present  day.  Everybody  wanted  reform, 
but  they  had  no  intention  of  changing  their  own  lives.  They 
would  support  Luther  to  get  rid  of  the  incubus  of  Rome,  but 
that  was  as  far  as  they  desired  to  go,  for  they  had  no  really 
religious  feeling.  Germany  had  become  corrupted  by  wealth, 
and  as  a  matter  of  fact  so  far  as  Germany  was  concerned 
it  was  much  truer  to  say  that  the  people  had  corrupted  the 
Church  than  that  the  Church  had  corrupted  the  people, 
for  the  Humanist  Movement  in  Germany  which  owed  its 
inception  to  the  ecclesiastical  reformer  Cardinal  Nicholas  of 
Cusa  never  became  as  corruptly  Pagan  as  in  Italy,  but  had 
addressed  itself  to  the  higher  emotions  and  had  sought  to 
train  the  conscience  of  the  individual  to  recognize  his  direct 
responsibility  to  God  and  his  fellows.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  corruption  in  Germany  was  of  secular  origin  and  had 
come  about  as  a  result  of  the  sinister  influence  of  Roman 
Law  reacting  upon  the  growth  and  development  of  com¬ 
merce.  At  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century  Germany 
was  the  most  prosperous  country  in  Europe.  It  was  the 
great  universal  centre  of  commerce,  the  great  market  for 
the  products  of  nature  and  art.  This  was  to  be  accounted 
for,  firstly  by  its  central  geographical  position,  which  in  the 
days  of  the  overland  trade  routes  placed  it  in  a  position  to 
trade  with  Italy  and  the  Levant  on  the  one  side  and  witl^ 
Flanders,  the  Scandinavian  North,  Poland  and  Russia  on 
the  other  ;  and  secondly  by  the  enterprising  character  of 
its  merchants,  who  knew  how  to  use  their  favourable  position 
to  the  utmost  advantage.  In  the  early  Middle  Ages  they 
had  been  averse  to  the  business  of  usury  and  had  devoted 
themselves  exclusively  to  mercantile  affairs.  The  Merchant 
Guilds  of  the  German  towns  had  organized  themselves  into 


1  Janssen,  vol.  iv.  p.  153. 


The  Reformation  in  Germany 


147 


the  famous  Hanseatic  League,1  which  had  settlements  in 
the  principal  ports  of  the  countries  with  which  they  traded. 
The  one  in  London  known  as  the  Steelyard  2  was  surrounded 
by  high  walls  after  the  manner  of  a  fortress.  It  was  required 
that  all  who  lived  within  its  walls — masters,  assistants  and 
apprentices — should  be  unmarried  men,  for  they  followed 
a  life  of  strict  discipline  which  was  monastic  in  its  character. 
It  was  upon  this  monastic  basis  that  the  broad  foundations 
of  German  trade  were  laid  in  the  early  Middle  Ages.  The 
adventurous  and  dangerous  calling  of  the  merchant  in  those 
days  fostered  in  them  a  simple  and  humble  piety  which 
expressed  itself  in  a  diligent  attendance  on  the  services  of 
the  Church  and  in  the  foundation  of  benevolent  institutions 
of  every  kind.  It  was  because  of  such  things  that  the  mer¬ 
chant  of  those  early  days  was  not  looked  upon  askance. 
It  was  believed  that  the  merchant  who  engaged  in  active 
trade  and  visited  distant  markets  was  rendering  a  service 
to  the  community,  and  it  was  considered  that  he  was  entitled 
to  some  gain  for  the  undoubted  risks  he  was  running.  But 
this  old-time  sense  of  responsibility  was  gradually  undermined 
by  the  lawyers,  whose  teaching  regarding  wealth  corrupted 
the  merchants ;  little  by  little  the  early  monastic  discipline 
was  broken  down  and  the  merchants  became  avaricious  and 
corrupt.  The  trading  corporations  which  had  originally 
come  into  existence  as  a  means  of  affording  mutual  protec¬ 
tion  for  their  members  in  foreign  parts,  for  the  assurance  of 
exchange,  the  settling  of  questions  of  justice,  taxation, 
and  coinage,  and  had  recognized  definite  responsibilities 
towards  society,  began  to  think  of  nothing  else  except  of 
how  to  secure  advantages  for  themselves.  They  became 
corrupt  monopolies  which  no  longer  observed  Guild  regula¬ 
tions.  They  kept  up  an  artificial  dearness  in  all  necessary 
commodities,  adulterated  articles  of  food  and  clothing, 
suppressed  small  industries,  paid  lqjv  rates  of  wages,  and 
forced  down  the  prices  of  agricultural  produce  to  such  an 
extent  that  all  through  the  fifteenth  century  there  were 

1  The  word  Hansa  has  the  same  significance  as  Guild,  and  was  first  used 
in  England  to  designate  certain  commercial  associations  (Janssen,  vol.  ii. 
P-  47)- 

2  See  Pictures  of  Old  England,  by  Dr.  Reinhold  Pauli,  chapter  entitled 
“  The  Hanseatic  Steelyard  in  London.” 


148  A  Guildsmaris  Interpretation  of  History 


frequent  risings  of  the  peasants  against  their  tyranny  and 
oppression.  All  these  evils  were  allowed  to  grow  unhindered 
because  the  traders  played  into  the  hands  of  the  great 
personages  either  by  lending  them  money  or  borrowing  it 
from  them  to  speculate  with. 

Now  why  did  the  nobility  become  a  party  to  these 
iniquities  ?  The  usual  Socialist  answer  would  be,  of  course, 
that  all  classes  exist  for  the  purposes  of  exploitation,  and 
therefore  it  is  but  natural  that  they  should  join  with  the 
merchants  to  exploit  the  peasants.  This,  however,  is  not 
historically  true.  The  Feudal  class,  as  I  showed  in  an 
earlier  chapter,  had  a  dual  origin,  and  half  of  it  at  least, 
probably  three-quarters  of  it,  came  into  existence  to  perform 
a  function.  Their  change  from  protectors  of  communal 
rights  to  exploiters  was  ultimately  due  to  the  corrupting 
influence  of  Roman  Law,  but  immediately  it  was  due  to  the 
desire  to  “  keep  their  end  up  ”  in  a  competition  of  luxury 
and  display  as  against  the  merchants.  Many  of  the  latter 
had  grown  to  be  richer  than  kings  and  emperors,  and  vanity 
had  prompted  them  to  give  visible  evidence  of  their  great 
riches  in  the  adoption  of  a  higher  and  higher  standard  of 
living.  Feasting  and  gambling  became  the  order  of  the  day, 
while  they  became  very  extravagant  in  dress.  Men  and 
women  were  alike  in  this  respect,  though  the  wives  and 
daughters  of  the  merchants  were  the  most  extravagant. 
Fashions  changed  constantly  and  took  the  form  of  dressing 
in  the  costumes  of  other  countries,  of  big  sleeves  and  little 
sleeves  and  all  the  other  foibles  with  which  we  are  familiar. 
Many  people  saw  the  dangers  in  these  innovations,  and 
attempts  were  made  to  put  a  boundary  to  the  growth  of 
extravagance  by  the  enactments  of  sumptuary  laws.  In 
the  year  1485  the  Council  of  Ratisbon  made  the  following 
rules  with  regard  to  dress  which  are  interesting  as  showing 
the  moderate  demands  of  reformers.  “  The  distinguished 
wives  and  daughters  of  burghers  shall  be  allowed  eight 
dresses,  six  long  cloaks,  three  dancing  dresses,  and  one 
plaited  mantle  having  three  sets  of  sleeves,  of  velvet,  brocade 
and  silk  :  two  pearl  hair  bands  not  costing  more  than  twelve 
florins,  a  tiara  of  gold  and  pearls  worth  five  florins,  not 
more  than  three  veils  costing  eight  florins  each,  a  clasp 


The  Reformation  in  Germany 


149 


not  having  more  than  one  ounce  of  gold,  silk  fringes  to  their 
dresses,  but  not  gold  or  pearl ;  a  pearl  necklace  not  costing 
more  than  five  florins,  a  pearl  stomacher  worth  twelve 
florins,  two  rows  of  pearl  round  the  sleeve  at  five  florins  per 
ounce,  a  gold  chain  and  pendant  worth  fifteen  florins  and  a 
necklace  of  twenty  florins.  Except  for  the  engagement  or 
wedding  ring,  none  were  permitted  to  cost  more  than  twenty- 
four  florins.  Three  or  four  rosaries  were  allowed,  but  they 
were  not  to  cost  more  than  ten  florins  ;  sashes  of  silk  and 
embroidery  worth  three  florins/’1  Few  people  would  say 
that  there  was  anything  very  Puritanical  about  such  a  law, 
though  no  doubt  it  would  seem  so  to  many  women  of  the 
day  who  were  said  to  wear  at  one  time  clothing  worth  three 
or  four  hundred  florins  while  they  had  in  their  wardrobes 
adornments  costing  more  than  three  or  four  thousand 
florins. 

I  said  that  many  people  saw  the  dangers  of  such  extrava¬ 
gance.  Wimpheling,  who  was  one  of  the  most  widely 
read  authors  of  his  day,  writing  on  the  great  commercial 
prosperity  of  Germany,  which  he  pointed  out  she  owed  to 
the  untiring  industry  and  the  energy  of  her  citizens,  artisans 
as  well  as  merchants,  showed  the  reverse  of  the  medal 
adding  "  wealth  and  prosperity  are  attended  with  great 
dangers,  as  we  see  exemplified  ;  they  induce  extravagance 
in  dress,  in  banqueting,  and  what  is  still  worse,  they  engender 
a  desire  for  still  more.  This  desire  debases  the  mind  of  man, 
and  degenerates  into  contempt  of  God,  His  Church  and  His 
Commandments.  These  evils  are  to  be  perceived  in  all 
classes  ;  luxury  has  crept  in  among  the  clergy,  particularly 
among  those  who  are  of  noble  birth  ;  they  have  no  real 
love  for  souls  and  they  try  to  equal  the  rich  merchants  in 
their  mode  of  living.”  2 

Wimpheling  saw,  as  men  in  all  ages  have  seen,  that 
luxury  leads  to  social  catastrophe.  The  peril  arises  from 
the  fact  that  it  is  no  longer  the  wise  but  the  wealthy  who 
set  the  social  standards,  and  a  kind  of  social  compulsion 
is  brought  to  bear  upon  others  to  live  up  to  it  whether  they 
can  afford  to  do  so  or  not.  As  only  the  very  rich  can  afford 
to  go  the  pace,  a  point  is  soon  reached  when  the  need  of 

1  Janssen,  vol.  ii.  pp.  63-4.  a  Ibid.,  vol.  ii.  p.  62. 


150  A  Guildsmaris  Interpretation  of  History 


money  is  very  widely  felt.  When  in  Germany  that  point 
was  reached,  nobody  wanted  to  do  any  really  productive 
work,  but  everybody  wanted  to  go  into  trade  where  money 
was  to  be  made.  Mercantile  houses,  shops  and  taverns 
multiplied  inordinately,  and  complaints  were  everywhere 
made  that  there  was  no  money  but  only  debts  and  that  all 
districts  and  towns  were  drained  by  usury.  Then  there 
happened  in  Germany  what  is  happening  to-day.  Each 
class  attempted  to  save  itself  from  bankruptcy  by  trans¬ 
ferring  its  burdens  on  to  the  shoulder  of  the  class  beneath 
it,  and  it  was  then  there  arose  in  Germany  a  bitter  enmity 
between  the  propertied  and  unpropertied  classes.  While 
the  working  class  were  advancing  towards  pauperism,  the 
general  rancour  and  class  hatred  increased  in  intensity  as 
the  wealthy  more  and  more  indulged  in  ostentation  and 
display. 

Such  was  the  social  condition  of  Germany  on  the  eve  of 
the  Peasants’  War  which  broke  out  in  the  year  1524.  It 
is  apparent  that  had  Luther  and  his  followers  never  appeared 
on  the  scenes  the  spirit  of  discontent  and  class  hatred  which 
was  growing  everywhere  and  which  had  been  fermenting 
since  the  beginning  of  the  fifteenth  century  would  have 
produced  tumults  and  seditions  in  the  towns  and  provinces 
of  Germany.  But  it  was  the  special  condition  of  things 
brought  about  by  the  evangelical  preaching  of  Luther  which 
hastened  the  crisis  and  gave  to  the  Peasants’ War  its  charac¬ 
teristics  of  universality  and  inhuman  atrocity.  Immediately 
it  was  a  movement  to  restore  the  old  communal  system  of 
land-holding  which  had  been  destroyed  by  the  inroads  of 
Roman  Law,  and  was  of  a  purely  agrarian  character.  The 
demands  of  the  peasants  were  moderate  and  bore  few  of  the 
traces  of  the  intellectual  and  physical  violence  which  marked 
its  later  course.  They  demanded  the  restoration  of  their 
old  Haingerichte  and  other  courts,  the  restoration  of  common 
lands  and  old  rights,  the  abolition  of  new  exactions  of  rents 
and  services,  and  freedom  of  water,  forest  and  pasture. 
The  revolt  commenced  with  local  risings  of  peasants  in  the 
south-west.  But  when  once  it  had  started,  it  gathered  momen¬ 
tum  quickly.  It  was  joined  first  by  one  and  then  by  another 
revolutionary  current  until  it  united  in  one  stream  all  ele- 


The  Reformation  in  Germany 


151 


ments  of  disaffection  and  threatened  to  inundate  the  whole 
of  Germany.  It  convulsed  almost  every  corner  of  the  Empire 
from  the  Alps  to  the  Baltic.  Bavaria  alone  was  unaffected, 
and  this  is  attributed  to  the  fact  that  the  Bavarian  Govern¬ 
ment  had  offered  strenuous  resistance  to  religious  innovations. 

As  the  rebellion  extended  its  area,  it  assimilated  ideas 
distinct  from  the  agrarian  grievances  which  had  prompted 
it.  The  communist  spirit  was  rampant  in  the  cultivated 
town  circles,  and  its  effect  was  to  give  a  religious  aspect  to 
the  revolt.  “  The  age  of  Christian  liberty  and  brotherhood 
had  come,”  it  was  said,  “  and  one  class  ought  to  be  as  rich 
as  another.”  It  is  not  improbable  that  the  religious  element 
came  to  predominate  because  it  offered  a  convenient  banner 
under  which  sectional  interests  might  unite.  While  the 
merchants  blamed  the  clergy  for  the  troubles,  the  nobility 
blamed  the  rich  merchants,  and  so  it  came  about  that  in  the 
early  stages  of  the  revolt  the  rich  middle  class  gave  some 
support  to  the  peasants.  Waldshut  and  Memmingen  were 
friendly,  while  Zurich,  Strasburg,  Nuremberg  and  Ulm  ren¬ 
dered  active  assistance.  Though  the  bulk  of  the  insurgents 
were  peasants,  they  received  others  into  their  ranks,  and 
along  with  priests,  barons  and  ex-officials  there  came  men 
of  criminal  tendencies,  who  are  always  ready  to  join  any 
revolutionary  movement  because  of  the  prospect  of  loot 
it  offers.  As  generally  happens  in  popular  risings,  these  baser 
elements  got  entirely  out  of  hand  and  by  their  excesses  brought 
odium  upon  the  whole  movement.  They  brought  about  the 
reaction  in  which  the  middle  class  element  made  common 
cause  with  the  nobles  in  suppressing  the  revolt.  Luther, 
who  in  the  early  days  of  the  rising  had  written  a  pamphlet 
in  which  he  deprecates  the  use  of  violence,  though  admitting 
that  the  demands  of  the  peasants  were  just,  now  became 
genuinely  terrified  at  the  size  of  the  revolt  and  wrote  a  second 
pamphlet  in  which  he  urged  the  princes  to  kill  and  slay 
the  peasants  without  mercy.  The  princes  took  him  at 
his  word.  After  lasting  two  years  the  revolt  was  put  down 
with  unheard-of  cruelty.  According  to  the  Emperor  Charles  V, 
a  hundred  thousand  people  were  killed  on  both  sides. 

From  whatever  point  of  view  Luther’s  action  is  examined 
it  remains  indefensible.  His  first  pamphlet  might  be  defended 


152  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


on  the  grounds  that  it  was  consistent  with  his  former  attitude 
inasmuch  as  he  had  always  taught  the  efficacy  of  the  word 
and  had  repudiated  appeal  to  the  sword.  But  there  can 
be  no  excuse  whatsoever  for  his  second  one,  for  he  must  have 
known  that  the  tide  had  begun  to  turn  when  he  wrote  it  and 
that  the  princes  needed  no  urging  to  be  merciless.  From  being 
a  national  hero  Luther  sank  to  the  level  of  the  leader  of  a 
sect,  and  a  sect  that  depended  for  its  existence  on  the  support 
of  political  and  financial  interests.  Henceforth  Lutheran 
divines  leaned  upon  the  territorial  princes  and  repaid  their 
support  with  undue  servility.  When  the  princes  began  to 
suppress  the  monasteries  and  to  seize  the  Church  lands, 
Luther  appears  to  have  been  taken  entirely  by  surprise.  He 
deplored  and  censured  the  selfishness  of  the  princes,  but 
he  was  powerless  to  prevent  it.  By  condemning  the  rising, 
Luther  had  alienated  for  ever  the  sympathy  of  the  peasants. 
His  action  settled  the  future  of  Protestantism  by  identifying 
it  entirely  with  vested  interests.  It  is  as  supplying  a  version 
of  Christianity  acceptable  to  capitalists  that  the  subsequent 
history  of  Lutherism  interests  us  and  is  to  be  studied. 

The  appeal  of  Luther  against  the  authority  of  the  Pope 
had  been  to  the  traditions  of  the  Early  Church.  Those 
traditions  were  communist,  and  it  was  because  the  early 
Christians  despised  wealth  that  they  could  approach  God 
without  the  intervention  of  a  priestly  mediator  and  without 
the  likelihood  of  abusing  the  privilege.  But  when  Luther 
alienated  the  peasants,  he  separated  his  gospel  from  any 
possible  communist  base  and  identified  it  with  a  class  whose 
traditions  were  not  only  extremely  individualistic  but  had 
an  inordinate  love  of  wealth,  and  this  made  a  great  difference. 
For  the  merchants  and  shopkeepers  who  now  supported  him 
were  not  the  kind  of  people  who  could  be  relied  upon  to 
interpret  Christian  ideas  to  any  but  their  own  advantage. 
They  came  to  support  Luther,  not  because  they  had  any 
intention  of  living  up  to  the  ideals  of  the  early  Christians, 
but  because  they  resented  supervision  and  for  long  had 
chafed  under  a  religion  which  taught  that  the  pursuit  of 
wealth  for  wealth’s  sake  was  an  ignoble  and  degrading  thing, 
however  far  its  priests  fell  short  of  its  ideal.  So  they  wel¬ 
comed  a  gospel  which  removed  such  supervision  and  made 


The  Reformation  in  Germany 


153 


them  answerable  only  to  their  own  consciences,  from  which 
they  had  little  to  fear.  Luther  might  have  denounced 
merchants  as  usurers  and  lawyers  as  robbers,  but  Luther’s 
supporters  were  not  thin-skinned  people.  They  saw  that 
the  principle  of  an  elective  priesthood  subject  to  the  control 
of  the  laity  was  a  valuable  one  for  the  ends  they  had  in 
view  and  that  organized  on  such  a  basis  the  priesthood  would 
soon  have  to  do  their  bidding.  Hence  it  was  that  the 
Protestant  Churches  speedily  came  to  accommodate  morals 
to  the  practice  of  the  rich.  The  Scriptures  might  be  studied 
but  not  such  parts  as  denounced  the  wealthy.  On  the 
contrary,  immorality  became  synonymous  with  sexual 
immorality,  swearing  and  drunkenness — vices  to  which 
they  were  not  particularly  prone — while  avarice,  the  one 
sin  towards  which  they  were  powerfully  drawn,  the  new 
religion  was  careful  not  to  forbid.  The  change  of  attitude 
towards  usury  is  not  the  least  of  the  triumphs  of  the 
Reformation.  The  history  of  the  change  is  interesting, 
considering  that  Luther’s  first  attitude  towards  the  problems 
it  presented  was  to  revert  to  earlier  and  more  rigid 
standards  than  were  current  in  his  day. 

The  Early  Church  had  condemned  usury  in  all  forms 
absolutely  as  immoral.  But  this  strict  view  was  modified 
somewhat  by  later  moralists  and  economists,  who  came  to 
realize  that  to  forbid  the  taking  of  interest,  under  all  cir¬ 
cumstances,  was  not  expedient,  inasmuch  as  it  led  to  serious 
public  inconvenience.  Hence  the  question  which  agitated 
the  minds  of  moralists  and  economists  in  the  thirteenth, 
fourteenth,  and  fifteenth  centuries  was  to  determine  what 
was  and  what  was  not  legitimate.  Starting  from  the 
principle  of  Aristotle  that  money  itself  cannot  beget  money, 
the  Mediseval  moralists  were  puzzled  as  to  how  to  justify 
the  taking  of  interest.  They  were  agreed  that  to  seek  to 
increase  wealth  in  order  to  live  on  the  labour  of  others  was 
wrong,  and  to  this  extent  the  issue  with  them  was  a  purely 
moral  issue.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  there  was  the  question 
of  public  convenience,  as  in  the  case  of  travellers  who  would 
have  to  carry  large  sums  of  money  about  with  them  in  the 
absence  of  bills  of  exchange,  or  the  question  of  risk  involved 
in  a  loan.  To  all  such  difficult  and  perplexing  problems 


154  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


the  Mediaeval  moralists  addressed  themselves,  not  for 
theoretical  but  for  practical  reasons.  For  as  commerce 
tended  to  increase,  it  became  urgent  to  hammer  out  some 
principle  whereby  the  necessities  of  trade  could  be  related 
to  some  definite  moral  standard. 

To  the  end  the  problem  evaded  them.  In  principle 
all  were  against  usury,  but  public  convenience  demanded 
that  exception  be  made  under  certain  circumstances.  These 
exceptions  grew  and  grew  in  number,  but  no  sure  principle 
was  forthcoming,  and  I  am  left  to  wonder  whether  the  failure 
of  the  Mediaeval  moralists  and  economists  to  find  an  answer 
to  the  problems  which  usury  presented  may  not  have  been 
due  to  the  fact  that  the  problem  is  only  partly  a  moral  one. 
The  difficulties  in  which  they  found  themselves  in  their 
attempts  to  justify  the  taking  of  interest  in  certain  cases 
in  order  that  public  convenience  might  not  suffer  arose 
because  the  function  which  the  usurer  performed  in  such 
cases  was  essentially  a  public  one,  and  should  have  been 
undertaken  by  men  in  some  corporate  capacity,  and  not 
left  to  the  initiative  of  individuals.  The  Franciscans 
appear  to  have  come  to  some  such  conclusion,  for  they 
founded  the  montes  pietatis  or  lending  houses,  which  advanced 
loans  to  poor  people  either  without  interest  or  at  a  very  low 
rate,  and  thus  prevented  many  from  falling  into  the  hands 
of  usurers. 

In  so  far  as  the  problem  was  a  moral  one,  perhaps 
St.  Antonino  1  gave  such  answers  as  were  to  be  given. 
St.  Antonino  was  an  Archbishop  of  Florence  in  the  fourteenth 
century,  and  was  therefore  well  placed  for  one  who  wished 
for  information.  He  was  a  representative  man,  and  to  be 
acquainted  with  him  is  to  be  acquainted  with  the  thought 
of  his  generation,  for  he  had  read  widely  and  formed  judg¬ 
ments  on  many  of  the  vexed  economic  problems  of  his  day. 
What  is  more  important,  his  judgments  were  of  a  very 
practical  nature,  for  he  was  constantly  referred  to  by  the 
bankers  and  merchants  of  Florence  to  give  decisions  on 
delicate  points  affecting  the  morality  of  trade.  This  fact 
alone  is  worth  recording,  and  should  be  of  particular  interest 

1  See  St.  Antonino  and  Mediceval  Economics,  by  Bede  Jarrett  (Manresa 
Press). 


The  Reformation  in  Germany 


155 


to  Marxians  who  believe  that  no  other  motive  but  exploita¬ 
tion  has  ever  existed  in  trade,  more  especially  when  they 
learn  that  St.  Antonino  anticipated  Marx  himself  in  affirming 
that  all  value  depends  upon  labour,  whether  of  hand  or  head. 

Though  in  the  early  days  of  the  Reformation  the  reformers 
were  even  more  opposed  to  any  compromise  with  usury 
than  the  Catholic  theologians,  the  influence  of  the  Reforma¬ 
tion  brought  a  breach  with  Mediaeval  doctrine  in  the  latter 
half  of  the  sixteenth  century.  Calvin  objected  to  the  idea 
of  regarding  money  as  barren  when  it  was  possible  to  purchase 
with  it  property  from  which  a  revenue  could  be  obtained. 
Calvin’s  attitude  may  therefore  justly  be  regarded  as  the 
turning-point.  It  had  certainly  much  influence  in  weakening 
the  old  repugnance  towards  usury.  But  Calvin  did  not 
allow  the  taking  of  interest  under  any  circumstances.  This 
is  evident  from  Calvin’s  own  words  : — 

“  Although  I  do  not  visit  usuries  (payment  for  the  use 
of  money)  with  wholesale  condemnation,  I  cannot  give  them 
my  indiscriminate  approbation,  nor,  indeed,  do  I  approve 
that  any  one  should  make  a  business  of  money-lending. 
Usury  for  money  may  lawfully  be  taken  only  under  the 
following  conditions,  and  not  otherwise.”  Among  these 
conditions  are  “  That  usury  should  not  be  demanded  from 
men  in  need  ;  nor  is  it  lawful  to  force  any  man  to  pay  usury 
who  is  oppressed  by  need  or  calamity,”  and  “  he  who  receives 
a  loan  on  usury  should  make  at  least  as  much  for  himself  by 
his  labour  and  care  as  he  obtains  who  gives  the  loan.”  1 
"  What  Calvin  feared  took  place.  In  after  centuries 
Calvin’s  great  authority  was  invoked  for  the  wide  proposition 
that  to  take  reward  for  the  loan  of  money  was  never  sinful ; 
and  a  couple  of  his  sentences  were  taken  from  their  context 
and  quoted  without  regard  to  the  conditions  by  which  they 
were  limited.  His  carefully  qualified  approval  of  the  claim 
for  usury  when  it  was  made  by  one  business  man  on  another 
was  wrested  into  an  approval  of  every  sort  of  contract 
concerning  the  loan  of  money.”  z 

What  happened  with  regard  to  usury  happened  also 
in  respect  to  the  institution  of  property.  The  communist 

1  An  Introduction  to  English  Economic  History  and  Theory,  by  W.  J. 
Ashley,  part  ii.  p.  459.  2  Ibid.,  p.  460. 


156  A  Guildsmari* s  Interpretation  of  History 


theory  and  practice  of  the  Church  had  been  abandoned 
and  the  Church  came  to  recognize  the  institution  of  private 
property.  It  was  to  be  regarded  as  an  evil  due  to  the  Fall, 
and  become  a  necessity,  because  of  the  presence  of  sin  in 
the  world.  Still  the  Church  did  not  regard  possession  as 
absolute  but  as  conditional,  and  dependent  upon  the  fulfil¬ 
ment  of  certain  duties.  Such  as  failed  in  their  duties  might 
be  called  upon  to  surrender  it.  They  had  no  legal  or  moral 
claim.  “  Private  property  and  common  use  ” — the  formula 
which  Aquinas  borrowed  from  Aristotle — became  the  official 
attitude  of  the  Church.  The  Roman  lawyers  sought  to 
reintroduce  into  society  the  old  Pagan  idea  of  absolute 
property  rights  in  the  interests  of  the  territorial  princes. 
But  the  Church  would  have  none  of  it,  and  did  all  in  its  power 
to  resist  the  encroachments  of  the  Roman  Code.  The 
Reformation  changed  all  this  by  removing  opposition  to 
the  inroads  of  Roman  Law.  The  rights  of  property,  from 
being  objective  and  dependent  upon  the  fulfilment  of  duties, 
became  subjective  and  absolute.  Luther,  who  had  denounced 
Roman  Law,  came  to  profess  the  most  restrictive  views  on 
property  ;  while  Melanchthon  went  much  further,  affirming 
that  property  existed  by  Divine  right,  and  that  to  limit 
it  in  any  way  would  be  contrary  to  the  teachings  of  Jesus 
Christ  and  the  Apostles. 

In  the  face  of  such  evidence,  it  is  impossible  to  maintain 
the  popular  notion  that  the  Reformation  was  a  triumph 
of  democracy.  So  far  from  this  being  true,  the  Reformation 
was  in  reality  the  triumph  of  the  State,  landlordism  and 
capitalism  over  the  Church  and  the  people,  and  this  tendency 
was  present  from  the  very  start.  The  story  which  has  been 
so  sedulously  promoted  in  order  to  give  the  Reformation  a 
democratic  flavour,  that  Wycliffe,  its  “  morning  star/’  was 
one  of  the  instigators  of  the  Peasants’  Revolt,  is  absolutely 
without  any  foundation  in  fact.  Considering  that  John 
of  Gaunt — whom  the  peasants  associated  with  the  lawyers 
as  the  cause  of  their  oppression — was  Wycliffe’s  best  friend 
and  protector,  it  is  foolish  to  connect  his  name  with  the 
revolt.  Moreover,  there  is  nothing  in  Wycliffe’s  writings 
to  suggest  that  he  favoured  insurrection.  Wycliffe  desired 
to  maintain  the  system  of  the  State  precisely  as  it  then 


The  Reformation  in  Germany 


157 


was,  while  he  regarded  the  growing  power  of  the  Church  as 
the  menace,  and  it  was  to  that  he  was  opposed.  On  the 
contrary,  it  was  the  Friars  who  organized  the  revolt.  If 
not  officially,  at  any  rate,  unofficially  ;  for  not  a  few  of 
them  actually  took  part  in  the  revolt,  leading  some  of  the 
bands  of  peasants  who  marched  to  London.  Anyway, 
suspicion  fell  upon  them,  and  it  may  have  been  one  of  the 
reasons  why,  when  the  Reformation  burst  forth,  the 
monasteries  were  suppressed. 


CHAPTER  XI 


THE  SUPPRESSION  OF  THE  ENGLISH 

MONASTERIES 

The  great  difference  between  the  course  of  the  Reformation 
in  England  and  in  Germany  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that 
whereas  in  Germany  the  Reformation  was  primarily  a  religious 
and  popular  movement  with  certain  political  and  economic 
complications  or  consequences,  in  England  the  religious 
movement  was  artificially  promoted  to  bolster  up  the 
political  and  economic  changes  initiated  entirely  by  the 
Crown.  For  though  Wycliffe’s  gospel  had  been  warmly 
espoused  on  the  Continent  by  Huss,  Jerome  and  Luther, 
his  influence  in  England  appears  to  have  come  to  an  end 
with  the  suppression  of  the  Lollards  in  the  reign  of 
Richard  II,  and  at  the  time  when  Henry  VIII  began  to 
suppress  the  monasteries  there  was  not  in  existence  any 
popular  movement  demanding  change.  It  is  significant 
that  no  serious  change  was  made  in  the  doctrine,  worship 
or  ceremonials  of  the  Church  until  sixteen  years  after 
Henry  VIII  had  repudiated  Papal  authority.  Though  Henry 
at  one  time  had  given  the  Protestant  Princes  of  Germany 
great  hopes  of  a  religious  union  against  both  Pope  and  Em¬ 
peror,  nothing  came  of  it.  It  was  clearly  a  piece  of  bluff 
intended  to  ward  off  a  possible  attack  by  the  Emperor.  For 
Henry  had  no  sympathy  with  Protestantism.  Not  only 
had  he  opposed  it  and  received  from  the  Pope  as  a  reward 
for  a  book  he  had  written  in  defence  of  the  Catholic  Faith 
the  title  of  “  Defender  of  the  Faith  ”  (a  title  which  English 
sovereigns  still  use,  it  being  popularly  supposed  that  the 
Faith  referred  to  is  Protestantism  and  not  Catholicism, 
as  is  actually  the  case)  but  he  had  actually  gone  so  far  as 
to  burn  as  heretics  men  who  preached  Protestant  doctrine. 

158 


The  Suppression  of  the  English  Monasteries  159 


However  much  room  there  may  be  for  differences  of 
opinion  as  to  the  motives  which  led  Pope  Clement  VII 
to  refuse  to  sanction  the  divorce  of  Henry  VIII  from  Cathe¬ 
rine  of  Arragon,  there  can  be  no  doubt  whatsoever  that  the 
repudiation  of  Papal  authority  by  Henry  which  prepared 
the  way  for  the  Reformation  in  England  and  immediately  led 
to  the  suppression  of  the  monasteries  was  due  to  the  fact 
that  Henry  entertained  a  passionate  desire  to  marry  Anne 
Boleyn  and  was  determined  that  nothing  should  stand  in 
his  way.  As  to  why  he  did  so  desire,  there  is  again  a  difference 
of  opinion.  The  most  generous  explanation  is  that  Henry 
wanted  a  son,  and  remembering  that  the  Wars  of  the  Roses 
had  resulted  in  the  death  of  all  possible  male  successors 
to  the  throne,  and  that  while  he  had  three  sons  and  two 
daughters  by  Catherine  only  one  daughter  had  survived, 
it  was  not  an  altogether  unnatural  desire.  But  such  an 
explanation  is  difficult  to  reconcile  with  the  facts  as  we  know 
them.  It  might  be  argued  that  the  desire  for  a  son  impelled 
Henry  to  seek  a  divorce  if  his  matrimonial  adventures  had 
come  to  an  end  when  he  married  Anne  Boleyn,  but  the 
evidence  in  this  case  is  strong  that  lust  was  his  ruling  passion, 
for  when  within  a  twelvemonth  he  had  grown  tired  of  her 
he  said  he  had  been  induced  to  marry  her  by  witchcraft, 
which  strongly  suggests  he  was  at  the  mercy  of  his  lusts. 
The  fact  that  Henry’s  life  became  a  succession  of  marriages, 
divorces  and  beheadings  suggests  that  he  was  possessed  of 
a  mania  which  is  equally  difficult  to  reconcile  with  the 
natural  desire  for  a  son  or  the  mere  pursuit  of  lust.  It  should 
not  be  forgotten,  moreover,  that  when  he  married  Jane 
Seymour  he  procured  a  clause  in  the  Succession  Act  enabling 
him  in  the  event  of  failure  of  issue  to  dispose  of  the  Crown 
by  will ;  it  being  understood  at  the  time  that  this  concession 
was  made  in  favour  of  his  illegitimate  son  the  Duke  of  Rich¬ 
mond,  who  died  shortly  afterwards.  If  the  only  object  of 
Henry’s  marriages  was  to  secure  the  succession  it  may  be 
asked  why,  if  it  was  possible  for  him  to  secure  this  concession 
after  he  married  Jane  Seymour,  he  could  not  have  done  it 
while  he  was  married  to  Catherine  of  Arragon.  The  grounds 
on  which  he  sought  to  obtain  a  divorce  from  her,  that  he 
feared  he  had  been  living  in  sin  with  her  because  she  had 


160  A  Guildsman’s  Interpretation  of  History 


been  formally  married  to  his  brother  Prince  Arthur,  who 
had  died  before  the  marriage  was  consummated,  will  scarcely 
acquit  a  man  whose  subsequent  life  proved  him  to  be  in¬ 
different  to  sin. 

Whatever  the  truth  may  be  as  to  the  secret  motives  of 
Henry,  there  can  be  no  doubt  whatsoever  as  to  the  conse¬ 
quences  of  his  actions,  for  the  whole  subsequent  history 
of  England  turns  on  his  marriage  with  Anne  Boleyn.  Having 
determined  to  marry  her,  and  after  six  fruitless  years  being 
unable  to  persuade  the  Pope  to  take  any  steps  towards  the 
granting  of  a  divorce,  he  resolved  to  overthrow  the  power 
of  the  Pope  in  England  by  making  himself  the  head  of  the 
English  Church.  In  this  task  he  was  aided  and  abetted 
by  the  perfidious  and  cold-blooded  Thomas  Cranmer,  whom 
he  immediately  afterwards  made  Archbishop  of  Canterbury, 
and  who  speedily  granted  Henry  the  divorce  he  desired. 
By  becoming  a  party  to  this  disreputable  business  Cranmer 
put  himself  entirely  into  Henry’s  power  and  henceforth 
had  to  do  his  bidding,  to  perish  at  last  amid  those  flames 
which  he  himself  had  been  the  chief  means  of  kindling.  All 
who  refused  to  acknowledge  the  king’s  supremacy  in  spiritual 
affairs  Henry  mercilessly  sacrificed.  Sir  Thomas  More 
and  John  Fisher,  Bishop  of  Rochester,  with  many  others 
were  executed  for  refusing.  The  executions  filled  the  world 
with  horror  both  at  home  and  abroad.  The  Emperor 
Charles  V  is  said  to  have  declared  that  he  would  rather 
have  lost  the  best  city  in  his  dominions  than  such  a  councillor 
as  Sir  Thomas  More.  Yet  in  spite  of  all  Henry  won  through. 
His  success  is  to  be  attributed  in  the  first  place  to  the  fact 
that  he  found  himself  in  an  extraordinary  strong  position 
owing  to  the  centralizing  process  which  had  been  going  on 
ever  since  the  reign  of  Henry  II  and  had  concentrated  in 
his  hands  more  powers  than  any  other  king  of  England 
enjoyed  either  before  or  since,  and  in  the  next  to  the  fact 
that  Henry  was  a  man  of  remarkable  ability  while  he  was 
entirely  unscrupulous.  The  old  nobility,  who  alone  might 
have  offered  resistance  to  his  policy,  had  been  for  the  most 
part  destroyed  in  the  Wars  of  the  Roses,  while  such  as  were 
left  were  no  match  for  him  in  intelligence.  They  were 
superseded  in  the  end  by  a  new  nobility  which  Henry  raised 


The  Suppression  of  the  English  Monasteries  161 

out  of  the  commercial  middle  class — a  class  of  sycophants 
who  enriched  themselves  by  continual  peculation.  It  was 
thus  that  covetousness  and  fraud  came  to  reign  in  high 
places,  and  the  tradition  was  established  which  identified 
the  governing  class  with  exploitation. 

It  is  possible  that  the  monasteries  would  not  have  been 
suppressed  had  not  resistance  to  Henry  been  offered  by  the 
Franciscans  who  maintained  the  Pope’s  authority.  Henry 
now  found  himself  in  the  position  of  having  either  to  abandon 
his  policy  of  making  himself  supreme  in  spiritual  affairs  or 
of  suppressing  the  whole  Order,  which  he  did  not  hesitate 
to  do.  It  now  became  apparent  that  sweeping  confiscations 
of  monastic  lands  were  to  be  made.  The  princes  of  Germany 
had  shown  him  the  way,  and  he  was  not  slow  to  learn  their 
lesson.  Doubtless  many  of  Henry’s  councillors  and  courtiers 
who  were  hoping  to  share  in  the  plunder  were  by  no  means 
averse  to  such  measures,  for  the  Reformation  could  not  have 
proceeded  apart  from  the  concurrence  of  Parliament.  But 
this  could  not  be  said  of  Parliament  as  a  whole.  For  the 
Act  of  1536,  which  transferred  the  property  of  the  smaller 
monasteries,  three  hundred  and  seventy-six  in  number,  to 
the  King  and  his  heirs,  stuck  long  in  the  Lower  House  and 
was  not  passed  until  Henry  threatened  to  have  some  of  their 
heads. 

The  agent  to  whom  Henry  entrusted  the  work  of  sup¬ 
pressing  the  monasteries  was  Thomas  Cromwell.  He  had 
been  an  underling  in  the  service  of  Cardinal  Wolsey.  After 
a  roving  youth  spent  in  Italy  and  elsewhere  he  had  risen  by 
his  wits,  recommending  himself  to  Henry  by  his  sycophancy 
and  by  his  treachery  to  his  old  master.  He  maintained  his 
position  by  utter  obsequiousness,  and  there  was  no  kind  of 
cruelty  or  tyranny  of  which  he  declined  to  be  the  agent. 
Yet  he  was  a  man  of  cultivated  tastes,  with  a  wide  acquaint¬ 
ance  of  Italian  literature.  He  had  seen  Machiavelli’s  great 
work  in  manuscript,  and  from  it  had  derived  the  principles 
that  guided  him  throughout  his  infamous  career.  He  was 
emphatically  a  man  of  the  Renaissance  ;  that  strange  com¬ 
bination  of  taste  and  rascality  which  it  was  so  successful 
in  producing.  Henry  made  him  a  peer,  and  appointed  him 
Royal  Viceregent  and  Vicar-General.  In  this  capacity  he 

11 


162  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


took  first  place  in  all  meetings  of  the  clergy,  sitting  even 
before  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury.  The  procedure 
adopted  in  the  suppressions  was  first  to  set  on  foot  a  visitation 
of  the  monasteries.  In  this  work  Cromwell  was  assisted  by 
deputies  who  were  as  villainous  as  himself.  They  prepared 
reports  full  of  false  accusations  in  order  to  find  pretences 
for  confiscating  monastic  property.  They  menaced  those 
who  objected  with  charges  of  high  treason.  Subsequent 
visitors  appointed  by  Henry  from  among  the  country  gentry 
sent  in  formal  reports  distinctly  contradicting  many  of  the 
facts  alleged  by  Cromwell's  agents.  But  such  protests  were 
of  no  avail.  Henry  was  out  for  plunder,  and  as  Cobbett 
rightly  observes  in  this  connection,  “when  men  have  power 
to  commit  and  are  resolved  to  commit  acts  of  injustice,  they 
are  never  at  a  loss  for  pretences."  1  The  monastic  orders 
were  never  heard  in  their  defence.  There  was  no  charge 
against  any  particular  monastery  or  convent  ;  the  charges 
were  loose  and  general,  and  levelled  against  all  whose  revenues 
did  not  exceed  a  certain  sum.  “  This  alone,"  observes 
Cobbett,  “  was  sufficient  to  show  that  the  charges  were  false  ; 
for  who  will  believe  that  the  alleged  wickedness  extended 
to  all  whose  revenues  did  not  exceed  a  certain  sum,  and  that 
when  those  revenues  got  above  that  point  the  wickedness 
stopped  ?  "  2 3  * 

It  is  clear  that  the  reason  for  stopping  the  confiscations 
at  the  point  where  the  revenues  did  not  exceed  a  certain 
sum  was  that  the  public  had  to  be  brought  into  line  before 
any  seizure  of  the  great  monasteries  could  be  safely  attempted. 
The  weak  were  first  attacked,  but  means  were  soon  found 
for  attacking  the  remainder.  Great  promises  were  held 
out  that  the  King,  when  in  possession  of  these  estates, 
would  never  more  want  taxes  from  the  people.  “  Henry 
employed  preachers  and  ministers  who  went  about  to  preach 
and  persuade  the  people  that  he  could  employ  the  ecclesias¬ 
tical  revenues  in  hospitals,  colleges  and  other  foundations 
for  the  public  good,  which  would  be  a  much  better  use  than 
that  they  should  support  lazy  and  useless  monks."  3  It  is 

1  A  History  of  the  Protestant  Reformation,  by  William  Cobbett,  p.  no. 

1  Ibid.,  p.  126. 

3  Letter  written  in  1540  by  Marillac,  the  French  Ambassador. 


The  Suppression  of  the  English  Monasteries  163 


possible,  of  course,  that  Henry  may  have  thought  that  he 
would  be  able  to  fulfil  these  promises  ;  but  he  soon  found 
out  that  he  would  not  be  able  to  keep  the  plunder  for  himself, 
and  that  the  nobles  and  gentry  could  only  be  persuaded  to 
allow  him  to  continue  his  dastardly  work  on  condition  that 
he  agreed  to  share  the  spoil  with  them.  They  so  beset 
him  that  he  had  not  a  moment’s  peace.  After  four  years 
he  found  himself  no  better  off  than  he  was  before  he  confis¬ 
cated  a  single  convent.  “  When  complaining  to  Cromwell 
of  the  rapacity  of  the  applicants  for  grants  he  exclaimed  : 
“  By  Our  Lady  !  the  cormorants,  when  they  have  got  the 
garbage,  will  devour  the  dish.”  Cromwell  reminded  him 
that  there  was  much  more  yet  to  come.  “  Tut,  man,” 
said  the  King,  “  my  whole  realm  would  not  staunch  their 
maws.”  1  And  thus  it  was  that  from  confiscating  the  pro¬ 
perty  of  the  smaller  monasteries  he  went  on  to  seize  that  of 
the  larger  ones,  for  there  was  no  stopping  half-way  once  he 
had  begun.  Where  opposition  was  encountered,  Cromwell 
and  his  ruffian  visitors  procured  the  murder  of  the  parties 
under  pretence  of  their  having  committed  high  treason. 
Here  and  there  the  people  rose  in  rebellion  against  the  devasta¬ 
tions.  But  the  local  outbreaks  came  to  nothing,  since  as 
nearly  every  one  of  any  consequence  was  sharing  in  the 
plunder  the  people  were  deprived  of  their  natural  leaders. 

During  the  Middle  Ages,  England  had  been  the  most 
prosperous  and  happiest  country  in  Europe,  perhaps  the 
happiest  country  at  any  time  in  history.  These  monasteries 
were  wealthy  and  full  of  things  of  gold  and  silver  ;  and 
society  was  so  well  ordered  that  these  things  remained 
untouched,  though  there  was  no  standing  army  or  police. 
But  Cromwell  and  his  ruffians  stripped  them  bare  of  all 
such  things.  The  only  parallel  which  history  affords  of 
such  a  rich  harvest  of  plunder  is  that  of  the  conquest  of 
Peru,  during  which  Cortes  and  Pizarro  stripped  the  temples 
bare  of  their  gold  and  silver  linings. 

”  The  ruffians  of  Cromwell  entered  the  convents  ;  they 
tore  down  the  altars  to  get  away  the  gold  and  silver,  ran¬ 
sacked  the  chests  and  drawers  of  the  monks  and  nuns, 
tore  off  the  covers  of  the  books  that  were  ornamented  with 

1  Cobbett,  p.  127. 


164  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


the  precious  metals.  These  books  were  all  in  manuscript. 
Single  books  that  had  taken  half  a  long  lifetime  to  compose 
and  to  copy  out  fair  ;  whole  libraries,  the  getting  of  which 
together  had  taken  ages  and  ages  and  had  cost  immense  sums 
of  money,  were  scattered  abroad  by  these  hellish  ruffians 
when  they  had  robbed  the  covers  of  their  rich  ornaments. 
The  ready  money  in  the  convents,  down  to  the  last  shilling, 
was  seized.1  *  1 

Among  the  libraries  so  destroyed  was  that  of  St.  Albans 
Abbey,  which  was  the  greatest  library  in  England.  But  the 
destruction  of  libraries  at  the  Reformation  was  not  confined 
to  those  of  the  monasteries.  The  original  Guildhall  Library, 
founded  by  Whittington  and  Carpenter,  was  destroyed, 
as  were  also  the  Library  at  St.  Paul’s  Cathedral  and  the 
predecessor  of  the  Bodleian  Library  at  Oxford.  About 
the  year  1440,  Humphrey,  Duke  of  Gloucester,  “  gave  to 
the  University  of  Oxford  a  library  containing  600  volumes, 
only  120  of  which  were  valued  at  more  than  a  hundred  thou¬ 
sand  pounds.  These  books  are  called  Novi  Tractatus,  or 
New  Treatises,  in  the  University  register,  and  said  to  be 
admirandi  apparatus.  They  were  the  most  splendid  and 
costly  copies  that  could  be  procured,  finely  written  on 
vellum,  and  elegantly  embellished  with  miniatures  and 
illuminations.  Among  the  rest  was  a  translation  into  French 
of  Ovid’s  Metamorphoses.  Only  a  single  specimen  of  these 
valuable  volumes  was  suffered  to  remain  ;  it  is  a  beautiful 
MS.  in  folio  of  Valerius  Maximus,  enriched  with  the  most 
elegant  decorations,  and  written  in  Duke  Humphrey’s  age, 
evidently  with  a  design  of  being  placed  in  this  sumptuous 
collection.  All  the  rest  of  the  books,  which,  like  this,  being 
highly  ornamented,  looked  like  missals,  and  conveyed  ideas 
of  Popish  superstition,  were  destroyed  or  removed  by  the 
pious  visitors  of  the  University  in  the  reign  of  Edward 
VI,  whose  zeal  was  only  equalled  by  their  avarice.” 2  Any¬ 
thing  which  was  decorated  apparently  ranked  then  as 
Popish  superstition,  which  was  a  convenient  cloak  for  the 
pursuit  of  plunder. 

1  Cobbett,  p.  130. 

1  The  History  of  English  Poetry,  by  Thomas  Wharton,  pp.  344-5,  1778 
edition. 


The  Suppression  of  the  English  Monasteries  165 


After  the  monasteries  were  plundered,  sacked  and  gutted, 
they  were  rased  to  the  ground,  and  in  most  cases  gunpowder 
was  employed  in  order  to  get  through  the  job  quickly.  For 
in  granting  these  estates,  it  was  in  most  cases  stipulated  that 
they  should  be  destroyed.  The  reason  may  be  easily  under¬ 
stood.  These  wonderful  Gothic  buildings  could  not  be 
allowed  to  stand,  for  their  continued  existence  would  have 
been  a  constant  reminder  to  the  people  that  these  estates 
had  been  plundered,  while  their  destruction  deprived  them 
of  all  hope  of  the  old  order  ever  being  restored.  The  loss 
of  these  splendid  buildings,  where  formerly  rich  and  poor 
received  hospitality  on  their  travels,  brought  a  feeling  of 
sadness  to  the  countryside,  particularly  in  solitary  and 
mountainous  districts — a  sadness  which  was  not  diminished 
when  the  manor-houses  of  Elizabeth  and  James  I  were 
built  out  of  their  ruins.  The  only  comfort  there  is  in  this 
terrible  story  is  the  knowledge  that  Cromwell,  after  he  had 
plundered,  pillaged  and  devastated  England,  was  sent  to 
the  block  by  Henry,  who  had  then  no  further  use  for  him. 
But  Henry,  the  chief  instigator  of  these  crimes,  got  off 
scot-free. 

It  has  often  been  urged  that  the  monastic  orders  could 
not  have  occupied  the  same  place  in  the  popular  affections 
as  they  had  done  at  an  earlier  date,  or  Henry  would  not  have 
found  it  possible  to  suppress  them.  The  answer  is  that 
on  a  straight  issue  they  could  never  have  been  suppressed. 
The  people  would  everywhere  have  risen  in  their  defence. 
But  Henry  was  too  cunning  to  create  such  an  issue.  He 
allowed  important  people  to  share  in  the  plunder,  disarmed 
opposition  by  promises  of  putting  their  funds  to  a  better 
use,  and  quelled  rebellions  by  making  promises  that  he  had 
never  any  intention  of  fulfilling.  Thus  by  trickery  he 
prevented  united  action  being  taken  against  him.  The 
suppression  of  the  monasteries  was  for  the  people  a  loss 
of  the  first  magnitude,  as  the  following  interesting  picture 
of  monastic  estates  at  the  time  bears  witness  : — 

"  There  was  no  person  that  came  to  them  heavy  or  sad 
for  any  cause  that  went  away  comfortless ;  they  never 
revenged  them  of  any  injury,  but  were  content  to  forgive 
it  freely  upon  submission,  and  if  the  price  of  corn  had  begun 


166  A  Guilds  mans  Interpretation  of  History 


to  start  up  in  the  market  they  made  thereunto  with  wain 
load  of  corn,  and  sold  it  under  the  market  to  poor  people, 
to  the  end  to  bring  down  the  price  thereof.  If  the  highways, 
bridges,  or  causeways  were  tedious  to  the  passengers  that 
sought  their  living  by  their  travel,  their  great  help  lacked 
not  towards  the  repairing  and  amending  thereof — yea,  often¬ 
times  they  amended  them  on  their  own  proper  charges. 

“  If  any  poor  householder  lacked  seed  to  sow  his  land, 
or  bread,  corn,  or  malt  before  harvest,  and  came  to  a  monas¬ 
tery  either  of  men  or  women,  he  should  not  have  gone 
away  without  help  ;  for  he  should  have  had  it  until  harvest, 
that  he  might  easily  have  paid  it  again.  Yea,  if  he  had 
made  his  moan  for  an  ox,  horse,  or  cow,  he  might  have  had 
it  upon  his  credit,  and  such  was  the  good  conscience  of  the 
borrowers  in  those  days  that  the  thing  borrowed  needed 
not  to  have  been  asked  at  the  day  of  payment. 

“  They  never  raised  their  rent,  or  took  any  income  or 
garsomes  (fines)  of  their  tenants,  nor  ever  broke  in  or 
improved  any  commons,  although  the  most  part  and  the 
greatest  waste  grounds  belonged  to  their  possessions. 

“  If  any  poor  people  had  made  their  moan  at  the  day 
of  marriage  to  any  abbey,  they  should  have  had  money 
given  to  their  great  help.  And  thus  all  sorts  of  people 
were  helped  and  succoured  by  abbeys  ;  yea,  happy  was 
that  person  that  was  tenant  to  an  abbey,  for  it  was  a  rare 
thing  to  hear  that  any  tenant  was  removed  by  taking  his 
farm  over  his  head,  nor  he  was  not  afraid  of  any  re-entry 
for  non-payment  of  rent,  if  necessity  drove  him  thereonto. 
And  thus  they  fulfilled  the  works  of  charity  in  all  the  country 
round  about  them,  to  the  good  example  of  all  lay  persons 
that  now  have  taken  forth  other  lessons,  that  is,  nunc 
tempus  alios  postulat  mores  A  1 

When  these  estates  passed  into  the  hands  of  the  land¬ 
lords  they  speedily  raised  the  rents  and  enclosed  the  commons. 
In  other  cases  the  peasantry  were  simply  turned  out  of  their 
holdings  in  order  that  sheep-farming  might  be  substituted 

1  Cole  MSS.  (British  Museum),  XII,  fol.  5,  “  The  Fall  of  Religious 
Houses."  The  author  resided  near  Roche  Abbey  in  Yorkshire,  and  had 
bought  some  goods  sold  out  of  a  church  by  Edward’s  commission.  (Quoted 
from  Cunningham,  pp.  472-3.) 


The  Suppression  of  the  English  Monasteries  167 


for  tillage.  “  It  seems,”  observes  Cunningham,  “  that 
the  lords  had  the  peasantry  entirely  in  their  own  power, 
and  that,  since  they  were  technically  liable  for  incidents  of 
the  nominal  servitude,  into  which  they  had  returned  since 
the  failure  of  1381,  their  lands  were  forfeited  in  law  if  not 
in  equity.”  1  It  may  be  said  that  these  changes  created 
the  problem  of  poverty.  For  though  there  was  some  poverty 
in  the  Middle  Ages,  the  monasteries  must  on  the  whole 
have  relieved  it,  for  one  of  the  charges  brought  against  them 
is  that  they  were  too  indiscriminate  in  their  charity  and 
that  many  beggars  had  become  dependent  on  them.  It  is 
not  necessary  to  deny  the  truth  of  such  statements,  but 
to  point  out  that  if  the  monasteries  supported  beggars  they 
were  created  by  the  landlords  who,  with  the  help  of  the 
Roman  lawyers,  had  dispossessed  the  peasants  and  turned 
them  adrift  because  sheep-farming  was  more  profitable  than 
tillage.  Are  the  monasteries  to  be  condemned  for  having 
succoured  those  whom  the  landlords  had  rendered  homeless  ? 
After  the  suppression,  the  poor  were  deprived  at  one  fell 
swoop  of  alms,  shelter  and  schooling.  The  consequence 
was  that  great  numbers,  left  entirely  destitute  of  the  means 
of  existence,  took  to  begging  and  thieving.  Henry  VIII 
is  said  to  have  put  72,000  thieves  to  death.  Elizabeth 
complained  bitterly  that  she  could  not  get  the  laws  enforced 
against  them.  “  Such  was  the  degree  of  beggary,  of  vaga¬ 
bondage,  and  of  thievishness  and  robbery,  that  she  resorted 
particularly  in  London  and  its  neighbourhood  to  martial 
law.”  But  it  was  all  of  no  avail.  The  people  had  been 
rendered  destitute,  and  there  were  only  two  possible  policies 
for  dealing  with  them  if  economic  injustices  were  to  be 
maintained — extermination  or  legal  pauperism.  Shrinking 
from  the  former,  resort  at  last  was  made  to  the  latter, 
and  some  general  permanent  and  solid  provision  was  made 
for  them.  In  the  forty-third  year  of  her  reign  there  was 
passed  the  measure  which  we  know  to-day  as  the  Elizabethan 
Poor  Law,  from  which  our  Poor  Law  derives. 

It  was  not  only  in  the  realm  of  charity  and  hospitality 
that  the  monasteries  were  missed.  It  was  customary  for 
them  to  maintain  highways  and  dykes,  to  build  bridges 

1  Cunningham,  p.  475. 


168  A  Guildsmaris  Interpretation  of  Histm'y 


and  seawalls  and  other  such  things  for  the  commonwealth. 
Many  arts  that  had  been  brought  to  a  high  state  of  perfection 
in  the  monasteries  were  paralysed  or  migrated  to  the  towns. 
Sculpture,  embroidery,  clock-making  and  bell-founding  were 
almost  entirely  monastic  arts.  The  monks  had  been  the 
chroniclers  and  transcribers  of  manuscripts  in  the  Middle 
Ages,  and  were  among  the  first  to  set  up  printing  presses. 
It  is  true  that  monasticism  had  for  long  been  on  the  decline, 
but  the  monasteries  had  come  to  perform  all  kinds  of  functions 
which  were  no  part  of  their  original  purpose.  The  conse¬ 
quence  was  that  their  violent  suppression  disorganized 
the  social  and  economic  life  in  the  community  in  many 
directions.  Their  disappearance  left  a  gap  in  the  educational 
system  of  the  country  which  the  reforms  of  the  nineteenth 
century  have  attempted  in  vain  to  fill,  for  the  education  of 
the  people  was  largely  in  the  hands  of  the  monastic  establish¬ 
ments  ;  what  was  not  in  their  hands  was  in  those  of  the 
chantry  priests,  who  were  generally  the  local  schoolmasters. 
So  it  came  about  that  when  in  the  reign  of  Edward  VI 
the  chantries  were  also  suppressed,  all  provision  for  educa¬ 
tion  practically  came  to  an  end.  The  reason  why  so  many 
educational  endowments  date  from  the  reign  of  Edward  VI 
is  not  to  be  found  in  the  surmise  that  as  a  consequence  of 
the  Revival  of  Learning  and  the  Reformation  a  sudden 
desire  for  enlightenment  came  over  society,  but  to  the  fact 
that  when  the  monasteries  were  suppressed  certain  people, 
feeling  the  gap  which  had  been  made  in  society,  left  money 
for  such  foundations.  The  destruction  of  the  monastic 
system  of  elementary  education  reacted  to  undermine  the 
position  of  the  universities,  which  nearly  disappeared  ;  for 
the  monasteries  not  only  provided  probationers  for  them 
but  maintained  many  there  to  complete  their  education. 
In  the  thirteenth  century,  it  is  said,  there  were  30,000 1 
students  at  Oxford,  but  to  such  an  extent  did  university 
studies  decay  that  “  in  the  six  years  from  1542  to  1548  only 
191  students  were  admitted  bachelor  of  arts  at  Cambridge 
and  only  173  at  Oxford.”2  When  the  revival  of  the 

1  This  number  is  given  in  Dr.  Reinhold  Pauli's  Pictures  of  Old  England. 
Perhaps  3,000  would  be  nearer  the  truth. 

2  Cambridge  Modern  History,  vol.  ii.  p.  468. 


The  Suppression  of  the  English  Monasteries  169 


universities  did  take  place,  their  character  was  completely 
changed.  They  were  no  longer  the  democratic  institutions 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  but  finishing-schools  for  the  rich. 

Educationalists  might  do  worse  than  study  the  Mediaeval 
and  monastic  system  of  education,  for  it  obviated  one  of 
the  most  glaring  defects  of  the  present  system — the  gulf 
between  elementary  and  higher  education.  This  it  did  by 
a  system  of  local  autonomy,  which  made  every  elementary 
school  part  of  an  institution  which  was  primarily  interested 
in  the  pursuit  of  learning.  In  consequence  of  this  there 
were  no  elementary  school  teachers  existing  as  a  class  apart, 
cut  off  from  the  main  currents  of  intellectual  life,  whose 
individuality  was  strangled  by  the  requirements  of  a  code. 
On  the  contrary,  the  whole  system  was  free  and  humane, 
while  it  was  organic  from  the  top  to  the  bottom  ;  and  this 
was  possible  because  the  Medievalists  were  not  interested 
in  an  abstraction  called  “  education,”  but  in  certain  definite 
things  which  they  were  anxious  to  teach.  The  problem 
of  improvising  machinery  is  so  simple  when  you  know 
what  you  want  it  to  do,  and  so  perplexing  when  you  don’t. 


CHAPTER  XII 


THE  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND 

Though  as  an  explanation  of  the  whole  course  of  history 
the  materialist  conception  is  demonstrably  false — since, 
among  other  things,  it  fails  to  offer  any  explanation  why 
capitalism,  after  dominating  Pagan  civilization,  was  brought 
under  control  during  the  Mediaeval  period — it  becomes  more 
plausible  from  the  Reformation  onwards  when  the  material 
factor  increasingly  tends  to  determine  social  development. 
Before  the  Reformation,  landlordism  and  capitalism  had, 
owing  to  the  sinister  influence  of  Roman  Law,  got  a  foot¬ 
hold  in  society  ;  but  landlords  and  capitalists  did  not  have 
things  entirely  their  own  way,  for  the  Church  and  Crown 
were  still  sufficiently  powerful  to  exercise  a  restraining  influ¬ 
ence.  But  after  the  suppression  of  the  monasteries,  the 
old  order  received  a  blow  from  which  it  never  recovered. 
The  monastic  lands,  at  least  a  fifth  of  the  wealth  of  the 
country,  were  transferred  to  the  great  landowners,  and 
this  transference  tipped  the  scale  entirely  in  their  favour 
as  against  the  peasantry.1  Landlordism  and  capitalism 
were  now  triumphant,  and  with  the  change  the  economic 
equilibrium  of  society  was  upset.  This  in  turn  reacted  to 
upset  the  religious  and  political  equilibrium.  The  history 
of  English  politics  from  now  onwards  is  to  be  interpreted 
in  the  light  of  these  central  facts.  Henceforth,  policy 
wavers  between  efforts  to  restore  the  equilibrium  of  society 
•  by  seeking  a  return  to  the  past — the  direction  in  which 
social  salvation  was  to  be  found  and  “  progress  ”  or  the 
maintenance  of  vested  interests — the  policy  that  was  even¬ 
tually  adopted. 

1  The  Servile  State,  by  Hilaire  Belloc,  p.  69.  Cunningham  gives  the 
monastic  lands  as  being  only  one-fifteenth  ;  whichever  estimate  is  true,  the 
consequences  were  the  same. 


170 


The  Reformation  in  England 


171 


With  the  accession  of  Edward  VI  the  absolutism  of 
Henry  was  relaxed.  “  The  late  king  was  doomed  to  the 
usual  fate  of  despotic  monarchs  after  their  death ;  the  very 
men  who  during  his  life  had  been  the  most  obsequious 
ministers  of  his  will,  were  now  the  first  to  overturn  his 
favourite  projects.”  1  Though  Henry  had  separated  the  Eng¬ 
lish  Church  from  Rome  and  had  suppressed  the  monasteries, 
he  had  not  espoused  the  cause  of  Protestantism.  Whether 
this  was  from  conscientious  reasons,  or  because  in  his  early 
years  having  written  a  book  in  defence  of  the  Catholic  Faith, 
that  obstinacy  and  pride  which  were  such  very  strong  features 
in  his  character  prevented  him  from  appearing  to  retract, 
must  be  a  matter  of  opinion.  But  all  obstacles  in  the  path 
of  the  spread  of  the  Protestant  Faith  were  removed  by  his 
death.  Edward  VI  was  a  minor,  and  entirely  in  the  hands 
of  his  ministers,  chief  among  whom  was  the  Duke  of 
Somerset,  his  Protector.  Somerset  was  a  moderate  man  who 
disliked  coercion  and  sought  to  govern  on  a  basis  of  civil 
liberty  and  religious  toleration.  The  first  Parliament  that 
he  summoned  effected  a  complete  revolution  in  the  spirit 
of  the  laws.  The  statute  which  at  the  close  of  Henry’s 
reign  had  given  the  force  of  law  to  Royal  proclamations  was 
repealed.  Nearly  all  the  treasons  created  since  1352  were 
swept  away,  many  of  the  felonies,  the  Act  of  Six  Articles  by 
which  Henry  had  sought .  to  enforce  religious  unity,  the 
laws  against  heresy,  all  the  prohibitions  against  printing  the 
Scriptures  in  English,  against  reading,  preaching,  teaching 
or  expounding  the  Scriptures  were  erased  from  the  statute- 
book.  The  immediate  consequence  of  it  all  was  that  the 
tongues  of  the  divines  were  loosed  and  the  land  was  filled 
with  a  Babel.  Heretics  and  sectarians,  Lutherans,  Calvinists 
and  Zwinglians  flocked  to  England,  which  became  one  great 
scene  of  religious  disputation  with  Londbn  as  its  centre, 
few  men  knowing  what  or  what  not  to  believe.  The  more 
trenchantly  a  preacher  denounced  the  old  doctrines,  the 
greater  were  the  crowds  that'  gathered  to  hear  him.  The 
New  Learning  carried  all  before  it  in  the  large  cities.  This 
was  not  because  the  majority  of  the  nation  desired  religious 
change,  but  because  the  Catholic  population  who  had  been 
1  Lingard's  History  of  England,  vol.  v.  p.  248. 


172  A  Guildsmari’s  Interpretation  of  History 


accustomed  to  leave  questions  of  theology  to  be  settled  by 
the  priests  found  themselves  at  a  tremendous  disadvantage 
when  discussion  on  religious  questions  had  descended  to 
the  streets.  Moreover,  the  issues  were  new,  and  few  Catholics 
knew  how  to  answer  the  innovators  ;  and  indeed  this  is 
never  quite  easy.  We  know  to-day  how  long  it  often  takes 
to  find  a  satisfactory  answer  to  some  heresy  on  social  questions. 
We  often  know  a  thing  is  wrong  and  yet  can’t  find  an  answer 
then  and  there.  The  Catholics  were  at  this  disadvantage 
at  the  first  onslaught.  New  interpretations  of  the  Scriptures 
came  upon  them  like  a  flood,  and  they  were  no  match  for  the 
zeal  and  conviction  of  their  opponents.  The  only  answer 
they  had  for  men  who  affirmed  the  right  of  private  judgment 
was  a  demand  for  respect  for  the  authority  of  the  Church, 
and  this  was  for  them  a  very  weak  defence  in  an  age  when 
the  Church  had  suffered  so  many  rude  shocks. 

The  Catholics  became  very  embittered.  They  blamed 
Somerset’s  leniency  and  toleration  for  the  Babel  of  opinion, 
and  were  ready  to  support  any  movement  to  secure  his 
overthrow.  The  plunderers,  on  the  contrary,  had  no  objection 
to  such  disputation.  Firstly,  because  it  diverted  attention 
from  them  and  their  doings  ;  and  secondly,  because  if  it  went 
far  enough  it  would  make  reunion  with  Rome  impossible, 
which  was  to  their  liking.  For,  they  reasoned,  if  they  were 
to  keep  possession  of  their  stolen  property  England  must 
be  separated  from  Rome  irrevocably.  Hence  the  cry  of 
“No  Popery  ”  which  figures  so  much  in  all  accounts  of  the 
Reformation.  It  was  the  watchword  of  the  plunderers,  since 
popery  for  them  meant  restitution. 

But  while  the  plunderers  were  in  accord  with  Somerset’s 
policy  of  religious  toleration,  they  strongly  objected  to  his 
attitude  towards  the  agrarian  troubles  that  were  brewing. 
Though  he  himself  was  one  of  the  greatest  of  the  plunderers, 
having  managed  to  get  into  his  possession  over  two  hundred 
manors,  he  nevertheless  did  not  stand  in  with  the  others 
in  their  refusal  of  any  justice  to  the  peasants.  He  was  in 
fact  a  curious  mixture  of  the  spirit  of  the  old  and  the  new 
orders.  While  apparently  he  thought  it  right  to  get  hold 
of  as  much  property  as  he  could  lay  his  hands  on,  for  his 
rapacity  knew  no  bounds,  on  the  other  hand  he  had  a  firm 


173 


The  Reformation  in  England 

conviction  that  the  ownership  of  property  carried  with  it 
certain  responsibilities,  and  he  actually  got  a  private  Act 
of  Parliament  passed  to  give  his  tenants  security  of  their 
tenure.  It  was  his  known  sympathy  with  the  cause  of  the 
peasants  that  brought  the  agrarian  crisis  to  a  head,  giving 
rise  to  the  Peasants’  Revolt  of  1549  that  led  to  his  fall. 

Though  the  agrarian  problem  had  been  intensified  by 
the  suppression  of  the  monasteries,  it  did  not  begin  with  it 
but  dates  from  the  thirteenth  century  when  the  Roman 
lawyers  transformed  the  feudal  lord,  who  was  a  functionary 
administering  communal  land,  into  a  landlord  whose  pos¬ 
session  of  the  land  was  absolute.  From  that  time  onwards 
land  began  to  be  bought  and  sold,  and  the  peasants  lost  that 
practical  security  which  they  had  enjoyed  under  the  old 
Feudal  System.  The  extension  of  commerce  gave  rise  to 
a  moneyed  class  which  established  itself  on  the  land  and 
gradually  gained  admission  into  governing  circles.  To 
these  new  landlords  the  feudal  idea  of  reciprocal  rights  and 
duties  was  altogether  foreign.  They  had  bought  the  land, 
they  regarded  it  primarily  as  an  investment,  dnd  sought 
to  apply  to  it  the  same  principles  that  they  had  practised 
in  trade,  making  it  yield  the  utmost  possible  return  for 
their  capital.  It  was  not  long  before  they  discovered  that 
owing  to  the  high  price  of  English  wool,  for  which  there  was 
a  great  market  in  the  Netherlands,  the  land  could  be  made 
to  yield  much  more  if  employed  for  sheep-farming  instead 
of  tillage.  It  is  said  that  by  effecting  this  change  a  landlord 
could  double  his  income.  But  sheep-farming  required  larger 
holdings  and  less  labour.  Hence  it  became  the  custom  for 
these  new  landlords  to  exercise  their  manorial  rights  to  the 
full  by  enclosing  the  common  lands  ;  to  buy  up  several 
holdings  and  turn  them  into  one.  The  old  homesteads  were 
left  to  decay,  and  their  former  tenants  became  either  vaga¬ 
bonds  or  landless  labourers.1  Another  means  whereby  these 

1  “  If  economic  causes  made  a  new  system  of  farming  profitable,  it  is 
not  the  less  true  that  legal  causes  decided  by  whom  the  profits  should  be 
enjoyed.  We  have  already  pointed  out  that  many  customary  tenants 
practised  sheep-farming  upon  a  considerable  scale,  and  it  is  not  easy  to 
discover  any  economic  reason  why  the  cheap  wool  required  for  the  develop¬ 
ment  of  cloth  manufacturing  industry  should  not  have  been  supplied  by  the 
very  peasants  in  whose  cottages  it  was  carded  and  spun  and  woven.  The 


174  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


new  landlords  sought  to  get  greater  return  for  their  capital 
was  to  raise  the  rents  of  their  tenants.  This  departure  from 
custom  and  tradition  was  a  thing  the  old  feudal  lords  would 
never  have  thought  of  doing,  and  it  was  felt  to  be  a  stab  in 
the  back.  The  consequence  of  all  these  innovations  was 
to  pauperize  a  large  section  of  the  community.  Great 
numbers  became  dependents  of  the  monasteries  which  had 
come  to  the  rescue  of  these  homeless  men  ;  when  the  monas¬ 
teries  were  suppressed  they  were  left  entirely  destitute. 
The  new  proprietors  of  the  Church  lands  accepted  no  respon¬ 
sibility  for  them.  In  consequence  they  wandered  about 
begging  and  stealing,  and  in  other  ways  became  a  source 
of  danger  to  the  rest  of  the  community. 

The  growth  of  this  evil  had  not  been  allowed  to  pass 
unnoticed.  Before  the  monasteries  were  suppressed  Sir 
Thomas  More  had  written  about  the  evils  following  upon 
enclosures  and  sheep-farming.  “  Sheep  are  eating  men,” 
a  phrase  which  he  used  in  his  Utopia ,  has  become  classical. 
In  1517  Cardinal  Wolsey  made  vigorous  efforts  to  stop 
enclosures,  but  without  success.  The  cause  of  the  peasants 
had  also  been  advocated  by  others  in  high  places  during  the 
reign  of  Henry  VIII,  but  he  was  too  busy  getting  himself 
divorced  to  trouble  about  the  condition  of  the  peasants  ; 
while  the  suppression  of  the  monasteries,  to  which  in  the 
end  he  found  himself  committed  if  he  was  to  be  acknowledged 
as  the  head  of  the  Church  in  England,  not  only  enormously 
increased  the  evil  but  the  resistance  which  he  encountered 
from  the  old  order  led  him  to  the  creation  of  a  new  aristocracy, 
which  differed  from  the  old  one  to  the  extent  that  it  did  not 
arise  to  exercise  a  public  function  but  to  act  as  an  instrument 
of  oppression,  and  as  such  it  identified  the  idea  of  govern¬ 
ment  with  oppression.  It  is  not  true,  as  Marxians  maintain, 
that  the  history  of  all  hitherto  existing  society  has  been  the 

decisive  factor,  this  method  of  [meeting  the  new  situation  created  by 
the  spread  of  pasture  farming,  was  the  fact  that  the  tenure  of  the  vast 
majority  of  small  cultivators  left  them  free  to  be  squeezed  out  by  exorbitant 
fines,  and  to  be  evicted  when  the  lives  for  which  most  of  them  held  their 
copies  came  to  an  end.  It  was  their  misfortune  that  the  protection  given 
by  the  courts  to  copyholders  did  not  extend  to  more  than  the  enforcement 
of  existing  manorial  customs  ”  ( The  Agrarian  Problem  in  the  Sixteenth 
Century ,  by  R.  H.  Tawney,  p.  407). 


The  Reformation  in  England 


175 


history  of  class  struggles.  It  was  not  true  of  the  Middle 
Ages  until  the  revival  of  Roman  Law  began  to  corrupt 
Mediaeval  society,  but  it  became  entirely  true  after  Henry 
VIII  created  his  plunder-loving  aristocracy.  But  while 
this  generalization  applies  to  the  governing  class  as  a  whole, 
there  have  at  all  times  been  a  number  of  highly  placed  men 
who  were  exceptions  to  this  rule  and  sided  with  the  people. 
It  is  of  vital  importance  to  any  proper  understanding  of  the 
social  problem  that  this  fact  should  be  recognized,  for  the 
Marxian  interpretation  of  history  not  only  operates  to  unite 
the  enemy  and  to  bring  division  into  the  reformers’  camp, 
but  by  creating  a  prejudice  against  normal  forms  of  social 
organizations  tends  to  thwart  all  efforts  to  reconstruct  society 
on  a  democratic  basis  by  diverting  the  energies  of  the  people 
into  false  channels. 

Somerset,  as  we  saw,  was  one  of  these  men.  His  known 
sympathy  with  the  peasants  brought  the  question  to  the 
front.  He  had  denounced  the  misdeeds  of  this  new  aristo¬ 
cracy  with  more  warmth  than  prudence,  and  a  party  which 
came  to  be  known  as  the  “  Commonwealth’s  men  ”  had  come 
into  existence.  Discourses  on  the  Commonweal  by  John 
Hales,  its  most  active  and  earnest  member,  is  one  of  the  most 
informing  documents  of  the  age.  The  failure  of  Parliament 
to  give  satisfaction  gave  rise  to  agrarian  disturbances  in 
Hertfordshire  in  the  spring  of  1548.  The  Protector  took 
advantage  of  the  occasion  to  appoint  a  commission  to  enquire 
into  enclosures.  Though  Hales  and  other  reformers  were 
members  of  it,  the  opposition  of  the  new  aristocracy  was 
such  as  to  reduce  it  to  impotence.  Hales  had  obtained  from 
the  Protector  a  general  pardon  for  those  who  had  made 
illegal  enclosures  presented  by  the  commission.  But  this 
did  not  lessen  the  determination  of  their  opposition.  They 
set  themselves  resolutely  to  defeat  its  ends.  They  packed 
the  juries  with  their  own  servants  and  threatened  to  evict 
any  tenants  who  gave  evidence  against  them.  They  even 
went  so  far  as  to  have  them  indicted  at  the  assizes.  The 
consequence  of  such  high-handed  procedure  was  that  in  the 
spring  of  1549  there  was  a  general  uprising  of  the  peasantry. 
Commencing  in  Somersetshire,  it  spread  to  Cornwall  and 
Devonshire,  to  Wiltshire,  Gloucestershire,  Dorsetshire,  Hamp- 


176  A  GuildsmarCs  Interpretation  of  History 


shire,  Oxfordshire,  Buckinghamshire,  Surrey,  Norfolk  and 
Suffolk.  In  the  west  changes  of  religion  were  made  the 
pretext  of  the  rising.  But  in  Norfolk  no  such  pretext  was 
made.  The  rebels  demanded  satisfaction  for  their  economic 
grievances.  For  a  time  it  was  feared  that  the  revolt  might 
develop  into  a  general  rising  like  the  Peasants’  War  in  Ger¬ 
many,  and  the  new  aristocracy  was  genuinely  alarmed.  In 
general,  however,  the  rebels  acted  without  concert  and  without 
leaders  ;  but  in  the  counties  of  Devon  and  Cornwall,  and 
Norfolk  and  Suffolk,  the  risings  assumed  a  more  threatening 
aspect.  Armies  were  formed  which  threatened  the  Govern¬ 
ment  and  would  probably  have  succeeded,  but  for  the  fact 
that  England  was  at  the  time  at  war  with  France,  and  the 
Government  was  able  to  use  Italian,  Spanish  and  German 
mercenaries  which  had  been  raised  for  service  in  France. 
The  rebels  were  defeated  in  the  west  by  Lord  Russell  and  in 
the  east  by  the  Earl  of  Warwick.  The  Protector  found 
himself  in  an  awkward  position.  His  sympathy  with  the 
insurgents  had  weakened  his  action,  while  his  readiness  to 
screen  and  pardon  offenders  exasperated  his  colleagues. 
It  brought  to  a  head  the  dissatisfaction  with  his  policy. 
He  was  charged  with  stirring  up  class  hatred  and  with 
unwillingness  to  take  drastic  action  against  the  insurgents, 
and  the  Catholics  united  with  the  plunderers  to  overthrow 
him.  The  movement  was  successful,  and  the  Earl  of  Warwick, 
who  had  now  become  the  idol  of  the  new  aristocracy,  became 
Protector,  with  the  title  of  the  Duke  of  Northumberland. 

Reaction  now  set  in.  The  masses  had  risen  against  the 
classes,  and  the  classes  resolved  to  retaliate.  “  Parliament 
met  in  a  spirit  of  exasperation  and  revenge,  and  it  went  back 
not  only  upon  the  radical  proposals  of  Somerset,  but  also 
upon  the  whole  tenor  of  Tudor  land  legislation.  Enclosures 
had  been  forbidden  again  and  again  ;  they  were  now  expressly 
declared  to  be  legal ;  and  Parliament  enacted  that  lords  of 
the  manor  might  '  approve  themselves  of  their  wastes,  woods, 
and  pastures  notwithstanding  the  gainsaying  and  contra¬ 
diction  of  their  tenants.’  In  order  that  the  process  might 
be  without  let  or  hindrance  it  was  made  treason  for  forty, 
and  felony  for  twelve,  persons  to  meet  for  the  purpose  of 
breaking  down  any  enclosure  or  enforcing  any  right  of  way  ; 


The  Reformation  in  England 


177 


to  summon  such  an  assembly  or  incite  to  such  an  act  was  also 
felony  ;  and  any  copyholder  refusing  to  help  in  repressing 
it  forfeited  his  copyhold  for  life.  The  same  penalty  was 
attached  to  hunting  in  any  enclosure  and  to  assembling 
with  the  object  of  abating  rents  or  the  price  of  corn  ;  but 
the  prohibition  against  capitalists  conspiring  to  raise  prices 
was  repealed,  and  so  were  the  taxes  which  Somerset  had 
imposed  on  sheep  and  woollen  cloths/’  1 

That  the  reaction  should  have  assumed  this  form  appears 
to  have  taken  the  Catholics  entirely  by  surprise.  They  had 
assisted  the  plunderers  to  overthrow  Somerset,  not  because 
they  were  unsympathetic  to  the  cause  of  the  peasants  but 
because  of  the  encouragement  he  had  given  to  heretics  and 
sectarians,  and  with  the  idea,  apparently,  that  his  overthrow 
would  be  followed  by  a  return  to  the  Catholic  worship. 
What  they  failed  entirely  to  understand  was  that  Protestant¬ 
ism  was  acceptable  to  the  new  aristocracy  because  it  made 
their  plunder  secure.  They  failed  to  perceive  that  capitalism 
was  a  much  more  deadly  enemy  than  Protestantism  of  the 
Catholic  Faith,  and  that  finally  Protestantism  was  nothing 
less  than  capitalism  camouflaged.  That  they  should  have 
failed  to  perceive  this  to  the  extent  of  being  willing  to  support 
the  plunderers  to  overthrow  Somerset,  proves  conclusively 
not  only  that  they  misgauged  the  temper  of  the  new  aristo¬ 
cracy  but  that  they  had  themselves  lost  sight  of  the  communal 
basis  of  Christianity.  It  is,  I  believe,  to  this  fact  that  the 
defeat  of  the  Catholic  Church  at  the  Reformation  is  finally 
to  be  attributed,  for  it  led  it  into  every  imaginable  political 
error.  If  the  Church  had  kept  the  communal  aim  of  Christian¬ 
ity  clearly  to  the  forefront  of  its  mind,  it  would  have  reverted 
to  the  policy  which  it  pursued  in  the  early  Middle  Ages 
of  supporting  the  peasants  against  the  secular  authorities. 
It  was  because  the  Church  did  this  that  it  was  feared  by 
the  secular  powers,  and  it  remained  powerful  so  long  as  this 
aim  was  steadily  kept  in  view.  But  when  at  a  later  date 
and  as  a  consequence  of  the  revival  of  Roman  Law  the  secular 
powers  became  more  powerful,  the  Church  made  the  fatal 
mistake  of  seeking  to  combat  the  growing  spirit  of  material¬ 
ism,  not  by  a  reaflirmation  of  the  communal  basis  of  Chris- 

1  Cambridge  Modern  History ,  vol.  ii.  p.  497. 

12 


178  A  Guilds  man' s  Interpretation  of  History 


tianity,  but  by  an  ever-increasing  insistence  upon  the 
principle  of  authority,  of  obedience  to  the  Church.  And  this 
proved  to  be  fatal  by  confusing  the  issues.  For  the  real 
issue  was  finally  not  whether  the  Church  or  the  State  was 
to  be  uppermost,  but  whether  the  communal  basis  of  society 
was  to  be  maintained.  Yet,  strange  to  say,  though  this  was 
the  real  issue  at  the  back  of  all  the  quarrels  between  Church 
and  State,  it  never  emerged  into  the  light  of  day.  The  quarrel 
had  begun  in  the  form  of  a  challenge  of  the  power  of  the 
Pope  by  the  Emperor,  and  so  it  remained  to  the  end.  The 
real  issue  was  lost  sight  of,  and  because  it  was  lost  sight  of 
the  Church  lost  the  power  of  popular  appeal,  and  so  finally 
was  reduced  to  attempts  to  maintain  its  position  by  intrigue. 
Because  the  Church  gave  emphasis  to  the  authoritarian 
rather  than  the  communal  aspect  of  Christianity  it  sought 
after  the  Reformation  to  prop  itself  up  by  alliance  with  the 
temporal  powers,  and  in  order  to  secure  such  alliances  found 
itself  obliged  to  support  the  exploiters  against  the  peasants, 
and  so  it  came  about  that  while  the  Church  succeeded  in 
reforming  itself  at  the  counter-Reformation  it  still  finds 
it  difficult  to  live  down  the  suspicions  associated  with  this 
policy.  So  often  to  appearances  has  it  sided  with  capitalism 
that  democrats  fear  that  to  submit  to  the  authority  of  the 
Church  would  be  to  submit  to  capitalism.  The  alliance  of 
the  Roman  Church  with  capitalism  in  Spain  to-day  is  evidence 
that  this  fear  is  not  altogether  unfounded.  Socialists  who 
have  no  prejudice  against  Catholicism  as  such,  who  realize 
that  during  the  Middle  Ages  it  was  the  sustainer  of  the 
communal  life,  do  feel  that  though  the  Church  may  sympathize 
with  the  workers  it  must  remain  powerless  to  help  them  so 
long  as  it  is  anxious  to  secure  the  support  of  the  temporal 
powers,  for  under  such  circumstances  when  vital  issues  are 
at  stake  the  Church  becomes  a  house  divided  against  itself. 
“  He  that  would  save  his  life  must  lose  it  ”  is  a  moral  prin¬ 
ciple  that  has  a  lesson  for  the  Church  as  much  as  for  the 
individual. 

To  return  to  our  subject.  It  was  not  long  before  the 
Catholics  were  made  to  suffer  for  their  mistaken  policy. 
The  motto  of  the  plunderers  was  :  Divide  and  conquer. 
Having  with  the  assistance  of  the  Catholics  succeeded  in 


The  Reformation  in  England 


179 


defeating  the  peasantry,  the  plunderers  then  began  to  perse¬ 
cute  the  Catholics.  The  first  Act  of  Uniformity,  passed 
early  in  Edward’s  reign,  was  now  enforced  against  clerical 
offenders.  Its  object  had  been  to  secure  uniformity  in 
Church  services  by  means  of  a  compromise,  which  all  might 
be  persuaded  or  compelled  to  observe.  A  little  later  a 
second  Act  of  Uniformity  was  passed  which  extended  the 
scope  of  religious  persecution  by  imposing  penalties  for 
recusancy  upon  laymen.  They  were  required  to  attend 
Common  Prayer  on  Sundays  and  holidays.  If  they  were 
absent  they  were  to  be  subject  to  ecclesiastical  censures 
and  excommunication ;  if  they  attended  any  but  the 
authorized  form  of  worship,  they  were  liable  to  six  months’ 
imprisonment  for  the  first  offence,  a  year’s  imprisonment 
for  the  second,  and  lifelong  imprisonment  for  the  third. 
An  incidental  object  of  these  reforms  was  perhaps  to  relieve 
the  financial  embarrassment  of  the  Government  by  the 
seizure  of  a  large  quantity  of  Church  property  which  became 
superfluous  by  the  extensive  reduction  of  ritual  which  this 
Act  effected,  but  its  main  object  was  perhaps  to  prevent  the 
growth  of  faction  which  was  such  an  embarrassment  to 
the  Government.  Cranmer,  who  during  the  reign  of  Henry 
VIII  condemned  people  to  the  flames  for  not  believing  in 
transubstantiation,  was  now  ready  to  condemn  them  for 
believing  in  it. 

With  the  accession  of  Mary,  the  policy  was  reversed. 
An  attempt  was  made  to  return  to  the  status  quo  ante.  Mary 
was  a  devout  Catholic,  she  sought  the  restoration  of  the 
Roman  religion  and  the  suppression  of  the  Protestant  sects 
to  which  the  leading  reformers  and  plunderers  belong. 
Altogether,  two  hundred  and  eighty-six  persons  were  put 
to  death  during  her  reign.  Some  of  these  may  have  been 
martyrs  to  their  opinions,  but  the  majority  were  the  scoundrels 
who  had  plundered  the  monasteries  and  who  had  sought 
by  treachery  to  destroy  the  Queen  herself.  In  restoring 
the  Catholic  Faith  and  in  acting  against  these  scoundrels 
there  can  be  little  doubt  that  Mary's  actions  were  popular. 
Only  three  years  before  her  accession,  the  peasants  had 
risen  against  the  new  aristocracy  and  religious  innovations 
in  many  parts  of  the  kingdom,  and  the  insurrection,  as  we 


180  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


saw,  had  only  been  put  down  with  the  help  of  foreign  mer¬ 
cenaries.  Was  it  not  natural,  therefore,  that  a  Queen  who 
sought  to  restore  the  old  worship  and  acted  against  a  gang  of 
ruffians  should  be  popular  ? 

It  had  been  Mary's  intention  to  take  the  stolen  property 
away  from  the  plunderers  and  to  restore  it  to  the  Church. 
But  this  was  no  easy  matter,  for  there  was  scarcely  a  man 
of  any  note  who  had  not  in  some  degree  partaken  of  the 
spoils.  Moreover,  the  lapse  of  time  had  created  a  vested 
interest  in  the  new  order.  Though  the  spoils  of  the  Church 
had  been  originally  divided  between  a  few,  they  had  now  by 
sales  and  bequests  become  divided  and  subdivided  among 
thousands,  while  a  new  economic  life  had  come  to  organize 
itself  around  the  new  order.  Cardinal  Pole,  the  Pope's 
envoy,  came  at  last  to  the  conclusion  that  to  demand  the 
restitution  of  the  stolen  property  under  conditions  which 
involved  the  compulsory  surrender  of  the  whole  or  a  part 
of  its  possessions  by  almost  every  family  of  opulence  in  the 
kingdom  was  impracticable.  So  the  Papacy  decided  to 
leave  the  plunderers  in  the  undisturbed  possession  of  their 
property,  and  to  confine  their  demands  to  a  restoration  of 
the  Catholic  Faith  and  worship.  On  these  terms,  the  Houses 
of  Parliament  agreed  to  recognize  the  Papal  supremacy  and 
allowed  Pole  to  pronounce  the  reconciliation  of  England  and 
the  Church  of  Rome. 

Though  Mary  assented  to  this  compromise  because  no 
alternative,  except  civil  war,  was  open  to  her,  she  was 
resolved  to  keep  none  of  the  plunder  herself.  She  gave  up 
the  tenth  and  first-fruits  ;  that  is  to  say,  the  tenth  part  of 
the  annual  worth  of  each  Church  benefice  and  the  first  year's 
income  of  each,  which  hitherto  had  gone  to  the  Papacy, 
the  Church  and  monastic  lands,  in  fact,  everything  which 
Henry  had  confiscated  and  which  were  in  her  possession. 
Her  intention  was  to  apply  the  revenues  as  nearly  as  possible 
to  their  former  purposes,  and  she  did,  in  fact,  make  a  start 
with  the  restoration  of  institutions  which  her  predecessors 
had  suppressed,  in  the  face  of  great  opposition.  She  did 
it  against  the  remonstrances  of  her  Council  and  of  Parlia¬ 
ment,  which  feared  that  her  generous  example  would  awaken 
in  the  people  a  hatred  of  themselves  and  the  desire  for 


The  Reformation  in  England 


181 


vengeance.  Not  to  be  undone,  the  plunderers  entered 
into  a  conspiracy  against  her.  Before  she  had  been  on 
the  throne  many  months  a  rebellion  was  raised.  The  rebels 
were  defeated  and  the  leaders  executed,  as  was  the  case 
in  a  second  rebellion  which  followed  shortly  afterwards. 
Mary’s  experience  seems  indeed  to  prove  that  it  would  have 
been  better  for  her  to  have  risked  civil  war  against  the 
plunderers  at  the  very  start  than  to  have  allowed  them  to 
keep  their  spoil  whilst  giving  hers  up  ;  since  from  the  enmity 
which  she  incurred  by  surrendering  the  property  her  father 
had  confiscated,  arose  those  troubles  which  harassed  her 
during  the  remainder  of  her  short  reign,  and  which  were  to 
some  extent  responsible  for  her  early  death. 

Had  Mary  lived,  it  is  possible  that,  having  defeated  two 
rebellions  and  disposed  of  the  leading  conspirators,  her 
example  might  have  been  followed  to  some  extent  by  the 
nobility  and  gentry.  But  she  reigned  only  five  years,  and 
Elizabeth,  who  succeeded,  undid  her  good  work  and  took  back 
the  plunder.  The  reasons  which  led  Elizabeth  to  reverse 
Mary’s  policy  are  probably  to  be  found  in  a  regard  for  her 
own  personal  safety.  For  she  had  no  religious  convictions 
like  her  sister,  and  her  choice  in  favour  of  Protestantism 
was  more  a  matter  of  policy  than  of  principle.  In  the  first 
two  years  of  her  reign  she  ran  simultaneously  two  policies 
— a  Catholic  and  a  Protestant  one — until  she  could  be  sure 
which  way  the  wind  was  blowing.  The  arguments  for  and 
against  maintaining  the  Catholic  worship  were  for  her, 
apart  from  personal  considerations  of  safety,  almost  equally 
divided.  On  the  one  side  of  her  were  the  clergy  in  possession, 
who  stood  for  the  Roman  supremacy  and  were  determined 
not  to  yield,  and  the  peasantry  who  favoured  the  Catholic 
worship.  On  the  other  was  the  new  aristocracy  of  plunderers, 
who  clearly  understood  that  their  position  would  not  be 
safe  until  Protestantism  triumphed,  and  the  population 
of  the  towns  which  was  mainly  in  favour  of  religious  change. 
If,  therefore,  she  chose  to  continue  Mary’s  policy,  she  might 
have  to  face  conspiracies  and  be  worn  out  by  them  like  her 
sister.  On  the  other  hand  if  she  espoused  Protestantism 
she  was  probably  committed  to  a  policy  of  religious  persecu¬ 
tion  so  far  as  the  major  part  of  the  nation  was  concerned. 


182  A  Guildsman’s  Interpretation  of  History 


Her  choice  was  a  difficult  one  for  a  person  without  religious 
convictions,  and  in  the  circumstances  it  is  not  surprising 
that  she  sought  to  make  her  own  position  secure  by  the 
adoption  of  Protestantism.  But  there  was  a  difficulty  in 
the  way.  Scotland  was  Catholic.  Mary  Queen  of  Scots, 
when  married  to  the  Dauphin  of  France,  was  styled  at  her 
court  the  Queen  of  England  and  used  the  arms  of  England. 
So  long,  therefore,  as  Scotland  remained  Catholic  England,  if 
Protestant,  could  not  be  free  from  attack.  Elizabeth  there¬ 
fore  decided  to  second  John  Knox  in  his  efforts  to  win  Scot¬ 
land  for  the  cause  of  Protestantism,  and  to  supply  him 
with  money  and  arms.  In  1555  he  returned  from  Geneva,  to 
conduct  an  evangelical  campaign.  He  was  a  great  organizer 
as  well  as  preacher,  and  as  he  went  through  Scotland  new 
Churches  sprang  into  existence  everywhere.  His  campaign 
was  followed  speedily  by  an  insurrection,  for  the  strife 
between  Catholicism  and  Calvinism  was  also  a  strife  for 
the  delivery  of  Scotland  from  a  foreign  army.  The  Scottish 
Protestants  besieged  a  small  French  force  in  Leith,  and  a 
small  English  force  was  sent  to  support  the  insurgents. 
The  campaign  was  soon  over.  The  French  force  surrendered, 
very  few  Scots  openly  siding  with  the  Queen  and  her  French 
force.  Scotland  now  became  Protestant,  and  danger  was 
no  longer  to  be  apprehended  from  an  attack  by  land. 

The  issue  was  now  clear.  Elizabeth  no  longer  hesitated, 
but  threw  herself  into  the  work  of  consolidating  her  position 
by  forcing  Protestantism  on  England.  If  the  Scottish  revolt 
had  miscarried  it  would  have  been  different.  In  the  event 
of  failure  she  had  intended  to  marry  one  of  the  Austrian 
cousins  of  Philip  of  Spain  and  to  pursue  a  Catholic  policy. 
The  English  people  were  now  irrevocably  committed  to 
Protestantism,  landlordism  and  capitalism,  if  they  were 
to  retain  their  national  independence.  It  was  only  by 
supporting  Elizabeth  through  thick  and  thin  that  they  could 
keep  themselves  free  from  foreign  complications. 

Elizabeth,  then,  had  finally  decided  that  England  should 
become  a  Protestant  country.  To  attain  this  end  she  stuck 
at  nothing.  In  spite  of  all  that  had  happened,  the  English 
people  were  still  mainly  Catholic  in  their  sympathies,  and 
rivers  of  blood  had  to  flow  before  they  could  be  changed. 


The  Reformation  in  England 


183 


“  The  Protestant  religion,”  says  Cobbett,  “  was  established 
by  gibbets,  racks,  and  ripping  knives.”  A  series  of  Acts  of 
Parliament  were  passed  which  by  degrees  put  down  the 
Catholic  worship  and  reintroduced  the  Protestant  form  as 
it  existed  under  Edward  VI.  Catholics  were  compelled  to 
attend  Protestant  worship  under  enormous  penalties,  and 
when  this  failed  an  Act  was  passed  compelling  all  persons 
to  take  the  oath  of  supremacy,  acknowledging  her  instead 
of  the  Pope  supreme  in  spiritual  matters  on  pain  of  death. 
Thus  were  thousands  of  people  condemned  to  death  for  no 
other  crime  than  adhering  to  the  religion  of  their  fathers, 
the  religion,  in  fact,  in  which  Elizabeth  herself  had  professed 
to  believe  until  she  became  queen  and  had  turned  against 
it,  not  from  conscientious  motives,  but  from  considerations 
of  convenience.  ”  Elizabeth,”  says  Cobbett,  “  put,  in  one 
way  or  another,  more  persons  to  death  in  one  year,  for  not 
becoming  apostates  to  the  religion  which  she  had  sworn  to 
be  hers,  and  to  be  the  only  true  one,  than  Mary  put  to  death 
in  the  whole  of  her  reign.  ...  Yet  the  former  is  called  or 
has  been  called  ‘  good  Queen  Bess,’  and  the  latter  *  bloody 
Queen  Mary/  ”  1 

Elizabeth's  successor,  James  I,  continued  her  policy  of 
persecuting  the  Catholics.  Before  he  came  to  the  throne  he 
had  promised  to  mitigate  the  penal  laws  which  made  their 
lives  a  burden,  but  he  actually  made  them  more  severe 
than  ever,  while  there  came  with  him  from  Scotland  a  horde 
of  rapacious  minions  who  preyed  upon  the  Catholic  popula¬ 
tion,  filling  their  pockets  by  extracting  from  them  the 
maximum  in  fines  which  the  statutes  allowed.  The  conse¬ 
quence  of  this  was  the  Gunpowder  Plot  which  was  organized 
by  a  group  of  Catholics  “  to  blow  the  Scotch  beggars  back 
to  their  native  mountains,”  as  Guy  Fawkes  replied  when 
asked  why  he  had  collected  so  many  barrels  of  gunpowder. 

Mention  has  been  made  of  the  fact  that  the  Duke  of 
Somerset  encouraged  the  sectarians  who  flocked  to  England 
from  the  Continent  to  preach  their  doctrines  in  order  to  make 
the  breach  with  Rome  final  and  irrevocable.  These  sectarians 
were  men  of  the  same  mentality  as  the  heretics  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  that  is,  men  who  were  temperamentally  incapable 

1  Cobbett’s  History  of  the  Protestant  Reformation,  p.  244. 


184  A  Guildsman’s  Interpretation  of  History 


of  seeing  truth  as  a  whole,  but  would  fasten  themselves  upon 
one  aspect  of  it  which  they  insisted  upon  in  a  spirit  of  narrow 
fanaticism  to  the  neglect  and  denial  of  all  other  aspects  of 
truth.  At  all  times  men  of  this  type  are  a  danger  to  society, 
and  in  the  Middle  Ages  they  were  kept  well  in  hand.  But 
after  the  Reformation,  when  the  Bible  was  translated,  and 
copies  of  it  multiplied  by  the  thousand  by  the  printing  press, 
recently  invented,  these  men  got  their  chance.  They  chal¬ 
lenged  the  Catholic  tradition  upon  which  the  Roman  Church 
had  based  its  authority  with  the  authority  of  the  Bible, 
upon  which  without  note  or  comment  they  took  their  stand. 
As  every  one  now  began  to  interpret  it  in  his  own  way,  it 
led  to  the  growth  of  innumerable  sects  who  poisoned  the 
minds  of  nearly  the  whole  community.  “  Hence  all  sorts 
of  monstrous  crimes.  At  Dover  a  woman  cut  off  the  head 
of  her  child,  alleging  that,  like  Abraham,  she  had  had  a 
particular  command  from  God.  A  woman  was  executed 
at  York  for  crucifying  her  mother  ;  she  had,  at  the  same 
time,  sacrificed  a  calf  and  a  cock.  These  are  only  a  few 
amongst  the  horrors  of  that  ‘  thorough  godly  Reformation/ 
We  read  of  killings  in  the  Bible  ;  and  if  every  man  is  to  be 
his  own  interpreter  of  that  book,  who  is  to  say  that  he  acts 
contrary  to  his  own  interpretation  ?  ”  1  This  is  what  making 
truth  subjective  comes  to  in  the  sphere  of  religion.  Only 
the  affirmation  that  truth  is  objective  can  make  the  common 
sense  of  men  prevail. 

Out  of  the  medley  of  conflicting  beliefs  and  opinions  there 
gradually  emerged  the  Puritan  Movement,  which  became 
such  a  formidable  power  in  the  reign  of  Charles  I.  Its 
members  were  not  bound  together  by  a  community  of  beliefs 
but  by  a  community  of  disbeliefs.  They  were  united  in 
their  hatred  of  all  ritual  and  ceremonies,  and  in  a  longing  for 
liberty  of  conscience  for  all  who  subscribed  to  the  “  No 
Popery  ”  cry,  but  not  for  such  as  thought  otherwise.  This 
new  religious  development  is  in  one  sense  perhaps  to  be 
ascribed  to  the  separation  of  religion  from  the  practical 
affairs  of  life  which  made  it  a  personal  rather  than  a  social 
consideration.  The  Catholic  and  Mediaeval  idea  had  been 
that  of  salvation  by  faith  and  good  works,  but  with  the  rise 

1  Corbett’s  History  of  the  the  Protestant  Reformation,  p.  303. 


The  Reformation  in  England 


185 


of  Protestantism  there  came  the  idea  of  salvation  by  faith 
alone.  This  idea,  which  found  a  ready  support  among 
the  commercial  class  who  desired  to  be  at  liberty  to  determine 
their  own  standards  of  morality  in  respect  to  their  trade- 
relationships,  changed  entirely  the  meaning  of  the  idea 
of  salvation  by  faith.  From  being  considered  as  a  means 
to  an  end — the  end  being  good  works — faith  came  to  be 
regarded  as  the  end  in  itself.  And  with  this  change,  religious 
faith  lost  its  social  significance.  Instead  of  implying  the 
acceptance  of  certain  moral,  objective  and  revealed  truths 
which  experience  had  proved  to  be  necessary  for  the  proper 
ordering  of  society,  it  came  to  imply  the  acceptance  of  certain 
peculiar  views  as  to  the  personal  nature  of  God.  Religion 
became  a  matter  of  keeping  on  the  right  side  of  God,  whom 
the  Puritans  interpreted  as  a  narrow-minded,  jealously  dis¬ 
posed  person,  much  inferior  to  the  average  human  being. 
Hence  the  endless  religious  discussions  to  decide  the  best 
method  of  propitiating  the  Deity,  which  naturally  came  about 
when  religion  lost  its  original  aim  of  seeking  the  establish¬ 
ment  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  upon  Earth  and  concerned  itself 
with  the  less  dignified  aim  of  saving  the  individual  soul 
from  eternal  damnation. 

Charles  I,  who  came  to  the  throne  on  the  death  of  his 
father  in  1625,  came  into  violent  collision  with  this  new 
power.  He  was  one  of  the  most  moral  and  religious  men 
who  ever  wore  a  crown  ;  but  his  autocratic  methods  made 
him  the  last  person  in  the  world  to  deal  with  the  Puritans. 
Many  were  the  grounds  of  quarrel  between  him  and  his 
Parliament  and  people,  but  the  great  ground  was  that  of 
religion.  So  far  as  the  people  were  concerned,  the  quarrel 
was  genuine.  They  were  Protestants  and  Puritans  by 
conviction,  and  they  looked  with  suspicion  upon  Charles, 
who  had  married  a  Catholic  wife  and  was  therefore  suspected 
of  designs  to  restore  the  Catholic  worship.  His  action  in 
repealing  the  Sunday  Observance  Laws  was  taken  as  evidence 
of  such  intention.  But  with  the  Parliament  the  trouble 
was  different.  The  landlords  of  whom  it  was  composed  had 
grievances  of  their  own.  Under  the  two  preceding  reigns 
they  had  been  accustomed  to  have  things  very  much  their 
own  way,  and  they  resented  Charles's  attempts  to  curb  their 


186  A  Guilds  man's  Interpretation  of  History 


power.  Realizing  the  troubles  which  arise  from  absenteeism, 
he  requested  the  landowners  to  live  on  their  estates  instead 
of  spending  their  time  in  London.  He  appointed  a  Com¬ 
mission — “  to  inquire  touching  Depopulations  and  conversions 
of  Lands  to  Pasture  ” — an  evil  which  was  destroying  rural 
life  and  pressed  hard  upon  the  poorer  inhabitants.  Charles 
was  determined  to  put  a  stop  to  this  scandal  and  imposed 
heavy  fines  upon  delinquents.  Sir  Anthony  Roper  was 
fined  no  less  than  £30,000  for  committing  Depopulations. 
Further,  Charles  so  arranged  matters  that  the  weight  of 
taxation  fell  entirely  upon  the  trading  and  wealthy  class, 
and  for  this  he  was  not  forgiven.  Parliament  resolved 
to  checkmate  him.  Government  was  impossible  without 
supplies,  and  they  refused  to  vote  him  any.  Charles  answered 
them  by  seeking  to  impose  taxation  without  their  consent. 
Here  was  a  clear  issue  about  which  they  could  fight  with 
some  prospect  of  securing  popular  support.  They  raised 
the  cry  of  arbitrary  government.  That  this  arbitrary  power 
was  exercised  in  the  interests  of  the  people  against  the  land¬ 
lords  did  not  prevent  the  cry  from  catching  on,  for  when 
people  put  their  faith  in  means  rather  than  ends  they  can 
be  easily  misled.  The  landlords  artfully  connected  their 
own  political  grievances,  the  exact  nature  of  which  they 
concealed  from  the  people,  with  the  Puritan  demand  for 
religious  liberty,  whatever  that  may  have  meant.  “  If 
it  were  not  for  their  reiterated  cry  about  religion/’  said 
Hampden,  “  they  would  never  be  sure  of  keeping  the  people 
on  their  side.”  1  It  was  by  such  means  that  Parliament 
secured  the  support  of  London,  which  was  the  centre  of 
Puritanism  and  which  played  such  a  decisive  part  in  the 
Civil  War.  The  end  was  as  we  all  know.  Charles  was 
defeated,  and  eventually  executed.  The  landlords  triumphed, 
and  Parliament  rewarded  the  people  for  their  support  by 
transferring  to  their  shoulders  the  burden  of  taxation  which 
was  taken  off  land  and  profits  on  trade  and  put  upon  food. 
It  was  thus  that  the  foundations  of  English  “  liberty  ” 
were  laid  upon  a  firm  and  democratic  basis,  and  taxation 
broadened. 

1  Commentaries  on  the  Life  and  Reign  of  Charles  I,  by  Isaac  Disraeli, 
pp.  330-1,  vol  i.,  quoted  in  Ludovici’s  Defence  of  Aristocracy. 


The  Reformation  in  England 


187 


Since  the  defeat  of  Charles,  no  monarch  or  statesman 
has  seriously  attempted  to  put  a  boundary  to  the  depreda¬ 
tions  of  landlordism  and  capitalism.  In  his  Defence  of 
Aristocracy  1  Mr.  Ludovici  has  exalted  Charles  as  a  national 
hero  who  led  a  forlorn  hope  against  the  stronghold  of  capi¬ 
talism  and  landlordism  under  which  England  still  groans. 
Though  he  glosses  over  the  weaker  side  of  Charles’s  character, 
he  certainly  makes  a  very  strong  case  out  for  him  which  leaves 
little  doubt  in  one’s  mind  that  Charles  did  try  to  govern 
England  in  the  interests  of  the  people  rather  than  in  that  of 
the  landlords  and  capitalists  ;  and,  moreover,  that  it  was 
because  he  made  this  valiant  attempt  that  he  eventually  came 
to  grief.  So  much  we  are  willing  to  grant.  But  Mr.  Ludovici 
goes  further,  and  seeks  to  make  of  his  example  a  case  for 
the  revival  of  aristocracy,  forgetting,  apparently,  that  the 
evil  influences  against  which  Charles  fought  in  vain  were 
largely  the  creation  of  another  aristocrat,  Henry  VIII, 
and  that  while  it  can  be  shown  that  individual  aristocrats 
have  placed  the  public  interest  before  their  own,  it  is  not  true 
of  any  aristocracy  considered  as  a  class  since  the  revival 
of  Roman  Law. 

With  the  reasons  which  have  led  Mr.  Ludovici  and  others 
to  advocate  a  revival  of  aristocracy  I  have  every  sympathy. 
Like  him,  I  realize  the  practical  difficulty  of  initiating 
measures  for  the  public  good,  apart  from  a  recognition  of 
the  principle  of  authority.  From  one  point  of  view  the 
problem  confronting  modern  society  is  that  of  the  re-establish¬ 
ment  of  authority.  But  I  contend  that  this  difficulty  is 
not  to  be  met  by  any  attempted  revival  of  aristocracy, 
because  the  authority  of  which  we  stand  in  need  is  not 
primarily  the  authority  of  persons,  but  of  ideas  or  things 
as  Mr.  de  Maeztu  terms  them.  The  authority  of  the  aristo¬ 
crat  presupposes  the  existence  of  certain  common  standards 
of  thought  and  action  throughout  the  community  ;  and  if 
these  are  non-existent,  as  is  the  case  to-day,  it  is  vain  to  seek 
a  remedy  in  the  authority  of  persons.  The  thing  to  do  is 
to  seek  the  re-creation  of  the  intellectual  unity  of  a  common 
culture  by  bringing  ideas  and  values  into  a  true  relationship 
with  each  other.  In  proportion  as  this  end  can  be  attained 

1  A  Defence  of  Aristocracy,  by  Anthony  M.  Ludovici  (Constable  &  Co.). 


188  A  GuildsmarCs  Interpretation  of  History 


authority  will  reappear  in  society,  for  ideas  tend  to  become 
authoritative  once  they  are  accepted.  When  this  is  secured, 
the  difficulties  which  make  Mr.  Ludovici  yearn  for  a  revival 
of  aristocracy  will  have  disappeared.  Democracy  and 
authority  will  no  longer  present  themselves  as  mutually 
exclusive  principles,  but  as  complementary  ones. 


CHAPTER  XIII 


THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

“It  is  no  idle  Hibernianism,,,  says  Mr.  Chesterton,  “  to 
say  that  towards  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  the 
most  important  event  in  English  history  happened  in  France. 
It  would  seem  still  more  perverse,  yet  it  would  be  still  more 
precise,  to  say  that  the  most  important  event  in  English 
history  was  the  event  that  never  happened  at  all — the 
English  Revolution  on  the  lines  of  the  French  Revolution.”  1 
That  such  a  revolution  did  not  materialize  in  England 
was  not  due  to  any  lack  of  ardour  on  the  part  of  those  who 
would  have  brought  it  about,  but  to  the  fact  that  the  English 
governing  classes  and  the  rising  manufacturing  class,  land¬ 
lords,  churchmen,  judges,  and  manufacturers,  stood  firmly 
together  in  order  to  save  themselves  from  the  fate  which 
had  overtaken  the  privileged  classes  in  France.  By  such 
means  they  postponed  the  crisis  which  threatened  England 
towards  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  until  the  develop¬ 
ment  of  railway  building  came  to  their  rescue  by  effecting 
a  general  revival  of  trade,  and,  within  certain  limits,  a  redis¬ 
tribution  of  the  wealth  of  the  community. 

The  fact  that  the  experiment  in  Revolution,  to  which 
all  Western  European  countries  were  moving  towards  the 
end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  was  tried  in  France  is 
to  be  attributed  to  the  writings  of  Rousseau.  “  But 
for  Rousseau,’’  said  Napoleon,  “  there  would  have  been 
no  Revolution,’’  a  conclusion  which  it  is  difficult  to  avoid, 
for  it  was  Rousseau  who  formulated  the  ideas  which  exercised 
such  a  profound  influence  on  the  course  of  the  Revolution. 
Apart  from  Rousseau,  great  social,  political,  and  economic 
changes  would  have  taken  place  ;  for  the  contrasts  between 

1  The  Victorian  Age  in  Literature,  by  G.  K.  Chesterton. 

180 


190  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


wealth  and  poverty  had  become  so  great,  famine  so  prevalent, 
and  the  monarchical  system  of  government  so  unworkable 
that  something  had  to  be  done.  But  there  is  strong  evidence 
to  support  the  idea  that  if  Rousseau  and  the  intellectuals 
associated  with  him  had  not  inflamed  the  imagination  of 
the  French  people  with  impossible  dreams,  the  change 
would  not  have  taken  the  direction  it  did.  It  would  have 
moved  towards  a  revival  of  Mediaeval  institutions,  for  though 
it  so  happened  that  such  Mediaeval  institutions  as  had  survived 
to  their  day  had  been  corrupted  by  Roman  Law,  the  Mediaeval 
tradition  among  the  peasants  was  still  strong,  as  evidenced 
by  the  fact  that  in  the  years  following  the  American  War, 
when  systematic  and  widespread  agitations  broke  out  in 
many  parts  of  France,  notably  in  the  East,  against  the 
dearness  of  food,  the  peasants,  acting  on  their  own  initiative, 
sought  a  solution  of  the  problem  by  a  revival  of  the  central 
economic  idea  of  the  Middle  Ages — the  idea  of  the  Just 
Price.  The  rebel  bands  would  compel  those  who  had 
brought  corn  to  market  to  sell  it  at  a  Just  Price,  or  else  they 
seized  the  corn  and  divided  it  among  themselves  at  a  Just 
Price.1  This  fact  alone  is  of  the  greatest  significance ; 
its  importance  cannot  be  exaggerated,  for  it  indicates  clearly 
the  direction  in  which  a  solution  would  have  been  sought 
had  not  the  influence  of  Rousseau  and  the  intellectuals  of 
his  generation  operated  to  confuse  the  issue  by  the  populariza¬ 
tion  of  ideas  which  were  antipathetic  to  the  political  and 
economic  philosophy  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

The  social,  political  and  economic  crisis  which  precipitated 
the  Revolution  was  accompanied  by  a  paralysis  of  the  body 
politic.  The  Revolution  came  because  the  machinery  of 
government  would  work  no  longer.  This  state  of  things  had 
been  brought  into  existence  by  Louis  XIV,  whose  policy  it  had 
been  to  concentrate  all  power  in  the  Crown.  Early  in  his  reign 
he  had  sought  to  exclude  the  nobility  from  the  chief  posts  in 
the  Government.  This  led  to  the  revolt  of  the  aristocracy 
known  as  the  Fronde,  which  he  succeeded  in  quelling ; 
after  which  he  summoned  the  nobles  to  his  court,  where  he 
undermined  what  independence  they  still  retained  by  cor¬ 
rupting  them  with  favours  and  pleasures.  He  overcame  the 
1  Cf.  The  Great  French  Revolution,  by  P.  A.  Kropotkin,  p.  40. 


The  French  Revolution 


191 


resistance  of  Parliament  to  his  encroachments  by  haughtily 
imposing  upon  it  a  silence  and  submission  of  sixty  years’ 
duration.  Having  by  such  means  succeeded  in  destroying 
the  independence  of  all  who  might  offer  resistance  to  his 
authority,  he  directed  his  immense  power  internally  against 
the  Protestants  and  externally  in  pursuing  an  aggressive 
policy  against  Germany  and  the  Netherlands.  For  a  time 
success  seemed  to  follow  him  everywhere.  Internal  dissatis¬ 
faction  with  his  policy  was  drowned  in  songs  of  victory. 
But  at  length  the  tide  turned,  the  men  of  genius  died,  the 
victories  ceased,  industry  emigrated  with  the  Protestants 
who  fled  from  the  country,  and  money  became  scarcer  and 
scarcer.  Indeed,  before  his  death  Louis  began  to  find,  as 
other  despots  have  found,  that  the  successes  of  despotism 
exhaust  its  resources  and  mortgage  its  future. 

The  death  of  Louis  was  the  signal  of  reaction  ;  there 
was  a  sudden  transition  from  intolerance  to  incredulity, 
from  the  spirit  of  servility  to  that  of  discussion  and  assertion. 
From  then  onwards,  all  through  the  eighteenth  century, 
the  disintegration  of  society  increased  daily  while  the  Govern¬ 
ment  fell  into  the  hands  of  royal  mistresses.  Opposition 
increased.  The  Third  Estate,  which  possessed  scarcely  a 
third  of  the  land  and  was  burdened  with  feudal  rents  to  the 
lords  of  the  manor,  tithes  to  the  clergy  and  taxes  to  the  king, 
without  enjoying  any  corresponding  political  rights  and 
privileges,  became  more  and  more  opposed  to  the  nobility 
who  were  exempt  from  taxation  and  to  the  wealthy  clergy 
who  swallowed  the  rich  revenues  of  the  bishoprics  and  abbeys. 
Though  they  were  divided  among  themselves,  they  were  united 
in  their  desire  to  remove  such  inequality  of  burdens,  while 
they  bitterly  resented  the  contempt  with  which  they  were 
treated  by  the  upper  classes.  As  time  wore  on  they  became 
more  and  more  united  and  increased  in  strength,  wealth 
and  intelligence,  until,  finally,  they  successfully  revolted. 
Meanwhile,  the  finances  got  into  a  more  and  more  difficult 
condition,  bringing  about,  finally,  the  state  of  things  that  in 
the  reign  of  Louis  XVI  led  to  the  summoning  of  the  States- 
General  which  in  turn  led  immediately  to  revolution. 

Such  was  the  problem  which  was  developing  when 
Rousseau  made  his  appearance.  There  was  little  or  no 


192  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


understanding  of  the  nature  of  the  problem  with  which 
France  was  then  perplexed  ;  but  there  was  strong  and  justifi¬ 
able  resentment  at  certain  obvious  and  concrete  evils.  It 
was  apparent  that  the  concentration  of  absolute  power  in 
the  hands  of  the  monarchy  was  an  evil  of  the  first  magnitude, 
while  it  was  apparent  that  the  survival  of  feudal  rights — 
of  privileges  without  corresponding  responsibilities — was 
not  merely  an  anachronism  that  needed  to  be  abolished, 
but  that  it  imposed  a  crushing  burden  upon  the  poor,  who 
were  called  upon  to  support  the  system.  Had  Rousseau 
been  familiar  with  the  historical  growth  of  this  problem  he 
would  have  known  that  the  concentration  of  power  in  the 
hands  of  the  monarchy  and  the  corruption  of  Feudalism 
were  alike  due  to  the  influence  of  Roman  Law,  and  that  the 
solution  of  the  problem  demanded,  among  other  things,  its 
supersession  by  the  Mediaeval  Law  which  it  had  replaced. 
But  not  only  was  Rousseau  unaware  of  the  extent  to  which 
the  evils  of  society  were  to  be  traced  back  to  the  revival  of 
Roman  Law  but,  like  most,  if  not  all,  of  his  contemporaries, 
he  had  a  great  admiration  for  it.  He  was  a  child  of  the 
Renaissance,  and  as  such  was  an  admirer  of  the  institutions 
of  Greece  and  Rome,  of  which,  like  the  scholars  who  idealized 
them,  he  was  altogether  uncritical.  He  was  apparently 
unaware  that  the  civilizations  of  both  Greece  and  Rome 
had  been  undermined  by  the  unregulated  use  of  currency, 
and  that  the  problem  of  its  regulation  which  had  eluded 
the  statesmen  of  Greece  had  found  a  solution  in  the  Guilds 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  which  had  been  rendered  economically 
possible  by  the  triumph  of  Christianity.  On  the  contrary, 
not  understanding  that  Paganism  had  proved  itself  to  be 
morally  weak,  he  ascribed  its  decline  to  the  spread  of  Christian 
doctrines,  which  he  considered  had  undermined  the  antique 
virtues.  He  was  ignorant  of  the  fact  that  Christianity  had 
triumphed  because  it  was  a  moral  tonic  capable  of  bracing 
up  the  fibre  of  decadent  civilizations.  He  had  been  pre¬ 
judiced  against  Christianity  in  the  days  of  his  youth  because, 
brought  up  in  Geneva,  he  had  only  known  the  Calvinist 
version  of  it ;  and  being  interested  in  the  things  of  this 
world,  while  Calvinism  was  only  interested  in  the  things 
of  the  next,  he  jumped  to  the  conclusion  that  if  ever  society 


The  French  Revolution 


193 


was  to  be  regenerated  it  would  be  necessary  to  abolish 
Christianity  in  favour  of  a  revival  of  Paganism. 

It  is  in  this  light  that  the  Social  Contract,  which  lit  the 
flames  of  the  Revolution,  should  be  studied.  Rousseau’s 
ideas  on  civil  religion  do  not  appear  until  the  last  chapter, 
but  they  provide  the  key  to  his  whole  position.  In  order 
to  understand  Rousseau,  it  is  necessary  to  read  him  back¬ 
wards.  The  immediate  problem  with  which  he  was  con¬ 
cerned  and  which  made  him  favour  a  Pagan  form  of  worship 
was  his  desire  to  see  an  identity  between  Church  and  State, 
which  he  recognized  did  not  exist  in  Christian  societies  ! 
That  such  a  union  might  not  be  desirable,  that  its  disadvan¬ 
tages  might  outweigh  the  advantages,  never  for  a  moment 
occurred  to  him.  So  obsessed  was  he  with  the  idea  of  unity 
that  he  never  saw  that  religion  and  politics,  when  real, 
never  were  and  never  can  be  the  same  thing.  Hence  it  was 
that  in  his  search  for  unity  he  fused  the  categories  of  religious 
and  political  thought.  It  would  be  more  strictly  true  to 
say  that  he  confused  them,  for  clear  thinking  demands 
that  they  should  remain  in  their  separate  categories.  While 
religion  concerns  itself  with  the  ideal,  politics  must  concern 
itself  with  the  real  if  it  is  to  give  practical  results.  Hitherto 
this  difference  of  function  had  been  clearly  recognized. 
In  the  normal  society  as  it  existed  in  the  Middle  Ages  it  was 
clearly  recognized  that  while  it  was  the  function  of  the  Church 
to  make  good  men,  it  was  the  function  of  government  to 
build  them  into  the  social  structure.  Moreover,  it  was 
recognized  that  the  success  of  the  legislator  was  ultimately 
dependent  upon  the  success  of  the  priest.  The  maintenance 
of  the  Just  Price  presupposes  the  existence  of  just  men, 
and  no  one  in  the  Middle  Ages  ever  entertained  the  contrary 
idea  that  the  arrival  of  an  ideal  social  system  could  precede 
the  arrival  of  ideal  men.  But  when,  after  the  Renaissance, 
scepticism  in  regard  to  religion  invaded  the  intellectual 
world  and  capitalism  triumphed  and  privileges  were  abused, 
men  of  religious  temperament,  instead  of  entering  the  Church 
as  they  would  have  done  in  the  Middle  Ages,  remained  outside 
and  turned  to  political  speculation.  The  consequence  of  this 
was  that  they  infused  the  sphere  of  politics  with  the  idealism 
which  is  proper  to  religion,  but  which  can  have  no  place  in 

13 


194  A  Guildsmari s  Interpretation  of  History 


politics  because  politics  must  concern  itself  with  men  as 
they  are  and  not  with  men  as  they  might  be.  In  this  mood 
Rousseau,  realizing  that  certain  evils  which  he  saw  around 
him  were  attributable  to  bad  government,  and  wishing  to 
see  them  remedied,  turned  from  speculating  on  ways  and 
means  of  remedying  these  abuses  to  speculation  on  the  form 
which  an  ideal  State  should  take.  But  instead  of  setting  to 
work  in  the  way  Medievalists  would  have  done — to  consider, 
firstly,  how  to  produce  good  men,  and  then  to  determine 
what  form  of  government  would  be  best  suited  for  giving 
the  best  results  from  the  material  so  produced — good,  bad, 
and  indifferent — Rousseau  began  by  first  thinking  out  how 
the  ideal  State  should  be  constituted,  and  then  turned  to 
consider  how  men  might  be  disciplined  in  order  that  his 
ideal  State  could  be  maintained  in  its  integrity.  This 
inversion  of  the  natural  order  of  thought  runs  all  through 
the  Social  Contract ,  and  it  was  this  that  led  to  tho  tyrannies 
and  violence  of  the  Revolution.  For  while  religion  seeks 
to  discipline  man  by  an  appeal  to  his  heart  and  conscience, 
the  State  is  powerless  to  maintain  a  discipline  except  through 
the  exercise  of  force.  The  Jacobins,  when  they  sought  to 
regenerate  France  by  sending  delegates  with  guillotines 
into  the  provinces,  were  in  their  crude  way  attempting  to 
give  practical  application  to  a  principle  which  Rousseau 
had  enunciated. 

It  was  because  Rousseau  made  morality  wholly  dependent 
upon  law,  as  at  a  later  date  Marx  made  it  wholly  dependent 
upon  economic  conditions,  that  he  was  so  anxious  to  devise 
a  State  which  would  be  mechanically  perfect  in  its  workings. 
If  morality  is  to  be  dependent  upon  law  it  is  a  matter  of 
vital  importance  that  the  State  should  be  so  constructed  that 
the  evil  desires  in  man  will  balance  and  neutralize  each 
other  in  an  equilibrium  of  good.  But,  of  course,  it  cannot  be 
done.  The  search  for  perpetual  motion  is  not  a  more  hopeless 
quest,  for  man  cannot  by  laws  be  made  to  go  straight  in 
spite  of  himself.  The  utmost  laws  are  capable  of  doing  is 
to  secure  outward  observance  of  the  moral  standards  of  those 
in  power.  They  may,  like  Mediaeval  Law,  aim  at  enabling 
good  men  to  live  among  bad ;  or,  like  Roman  Law,  at  enabling 
rich  men  to  live  among  poor  ;  but  to  create  living  standards 


The  French  Revolution 


195 


of  morality  they  are  powerless,  for  if  the  law  attempts  to 
get  ahead  of  public  opinion  it  will  not  be  observed,  while 
the  attempt  of  a  Government  to  secure  observance  under 
such  conditions  would  be  to  institute  a  tyranny  that  would 
be  its  undoing. 

The  particular  form  of  government  which  Rousseau 
thought  would  automatically  promote  the  public  welfare 
was  one  based  upon  the  sovereignty  of  the  people.  He  says  : 

"  One  essential  and  inevitable  defect  which  will  render  a 
monarchical  government  inferior  to  a  republican  one  is  that 
in  the  latter  the  public  voice  hardly  ever  raises  to  the  highest 
posts  any  but  enlightened  and  capable  men,  who  fill  them 
honourably  ;  whereas  those  who  succeed  in  monarchies 
are  most  frequently  only  petty  mischief-makers,  petty 
knaves,  petty  intriguers,  whose  petty  talents,  which  enable 
them  to  obtain  high  posts  in  courts,  only  serve  to  show  the 
public  their  ineptitude  as  soon  as  they  have  attained  them. 
The  people  are  much  less  mistaken  about  their  choice  than 
the  prince  is  ;  and  a  man  of  real  merit  is  almost  as  rare  in 
a  royal  ministry  as  a  fool  at  the  head  of  a  republican  govern¬ 
ment.  Therefore,  when  by  some  fortunate  chance  one  of 
these  born  rulers  takes  the  helm  of  affairs  in  a  monarchy 
almost  wrecked  by  such  a  fine  set  of  ministers,  it  is  quite 
astonishing  what  resources  he  finds,  and  his  accession  to 
power  forms  an  epoch  in  a  country.” 

From  the  foregoing  passage  as  from  others  which  might 
be  quoted,  it  is  evident  that  Rousseau  did  not  believe  in 
Equality  as  it  is  understood  by  democrats  to-day.  He 
would  have  answered  the  democrat  who  asserts  that  the 
people  have  a  right  to  exercise  power  regardless  of  the  use 
which  they  make  of  it,  by  saying  that  democrats  in  that 
case  take  their  stand  on  precisely  the  same  ground  as  the 
authoritarian  who  believes  in  the  divine  right  of  kings. 
Both  have  one  thing  in  common  :  they  make  power  subjective 
and  absolute  instead  of  objective  and  conditional  upon  the 
fulfilment  of  duties.  This  was  not  Rousseau’s  idea.  Strictly 
speaking,  Rousseau  did  not  believe  in  Equality  at  all,  but  in 
natural  inequalities.  He  wanted  to  get  rid  of  the  inequalities 
based  upon  wealth  and  influence  in  order  to  clear  the  way  for 
what  may  be  termed  the  free  movement  in  society  of  natural 


! 


196  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 

inequalities.  He  believed  in  government  by  the  wise. 
“  It  is,”  he  says,  “  the  best  and  most  natural  order  of  things 
that  the  wise  should  govern  the  multitude,  when  we  are  sure 
they  will  govern  it  for  its  advantage  and  not  for  their  own.” 
The  wise  were  to  be  the  executive  officers  of  the  State,  but 
he  wanted  the  people  to  be  sovereign  in  order  that  they 
might  keep  a  check  on  them.  In  this  sense  only  did  Rousseau 
believe  in  Equality.  He  did  not  regard  it  as  an  end  in  itself, 
but  as  a  means  to  an  end,  the  end  being  government  by 
the  best  and  wisest.  There  is  something  very  simple  and 
unsophisticated  about  all  this.  The  whole  trouble  of  the 
world  from  one  point  of  view  is  precisely  that  the  best  and 
wisest  do  not  automatically  come  to  the  top  under  democracy 
any  more  than  they  do  under  any  other  form  of  government. 
It  is  the  clever  rather  than  the  wise  who  do,  and,  unfortunately, 
the  wise  are  rarely  clever,  nor  are  the  clever  usually  wise. 
When  the  wise  do  come  to  the  top  the  millennium  will  have 
arrived. 

Rousseau  himself  realized  this  difficulty  when  he  con¬ 
sidered  the  problem  of  the  legislator.  He  was  of  the  opinion 
that  neither  the  sovereign  people  nor  the  executive  were 
wise  enough  to  frame  good  laws.  The  successful  accomplish¬ 
ment  of  such  a  task  required  a  superman.  Of  the  legislator 
or  lawgiver  he  says  : — 

“  Wise  men  who  want  to  speak  to  the  vulgar  in  their 
own  language  instead  of  in  a  popular  way  will  not  be  under¬ 
stood.  Now,  there  are  a  thousand  kinds  of  ideas  which  it 
is  impossible  to  translate  into  the  language  of  the  people. 
Views  very  general  and  objects  very  remote  are  alike  beyond 
its  reach  ;  and  each  individual  approving  of  no  other  plan 
of  government  than  that  which  promotes  his  own  interests, 
does  not  readily  perceive  the  benefits  which  he  is  to  derive 
from  the  continual  deprivations  which  good  laws  impose. 
In  order  that  a  newly  formed  nation  might  approve  sound 
maxims  of  politics  and  observe  the  fundamental  rules  of 
State  policy,  it  would  be  necessary  that  the  effect  should 
become  the  cause  ;  that  the  social  spirit,  which  should 
be  the  work  of  the  institution,  should  preside  over  the  institu¬ 
tion  itself,  and  that  men  should  be,  prior  to  the  laws,  what 
they  ought  to  become  by  means  of  them.  Since,  then, 


The  French  Revolution 


197 


the  legislator  cannot  employ  either  force  or  reasoning,  he 
must  needs  have  recourse  to  an  authorit}/  of  a  different 
order,  which  can  compel  without  violence  and  persuade 
without  convincing. 

“  It  is  this  which  in  all  ages  has  constrained  the  founders 
of  nations  to  resort  to  the  intervention  of  Heaven,  and  to 
give  the  gods  the  credit  for  their  own  wisdom,  in  order  that 
the  nations,  subjected  to  the  laws  of  the  State  as  to  those 
of  nature,  and  recognizing  the  same  power  in  the  formation 
of  man  and  in  that  of  the  State,  might  obey  willingly  and 
bear  submissively  the  yoke  of  the  public  welfare.  The  legis¬ 
lator  puts  into  the  mouths  of  the  immortals  that  sublime 
reason  which  soars  beyond  the  reach  of  common  men,  in 
order  that  he  may  win  over  by  divine  authority  those  whom 
human  prudence  could  not  move.  But  it  does  not  belong 
to  every  man  to  make  the  gods  his  oracles,  nor  to  be  believed 
when  he  proclaims  himself  their  interpreter.  The  great 
soul  of  the  legislator  is  the  real  miracle  which  must  give 
proof  of  his  mission.  .  .  .  The  choice  of  the  moment  for  the 
establishment  of  a  government  is  one  of  the  surest  marks 
for  distinguishing  the  work  of  the  legislator  from  that  of 
the  tyrant.” 

Apart  from  the  exceptional  problem  which  the  law¬ 
giver  presents,  Rousseau  quite  rightly  realized  that  in 
general  there  are  certain  external  circumstances  which 
favour  the  rise  to  power  of  the  wise  as  there  are  certain 
others  which  tend  to  obstruct  them.  He  saw  that  the  wise 
stood  the  best  chance  of  success  in  the  world,  where  men  were 
well  known  to  each  other,  and  where  a  certain  measure  of 
economic  equality  obtained.  Hence  his  advocacy  of  small 
States  and  of  small  property.  But  he  was  not  a  leveller. 
He  says,  “  with  regard  to  Equality  we  should  not  understand 
that  the  degrees  of  power  and  wealth  should  be  absolutely 
the  same  ;  but  that,  as  to  power,  it  should  fall  short  of  all 
violence,  and  never  be  exercised  except  by  virtue  of  station 
and  of  the  laws  ;  while  as  to  wealth,  no  citizen  should  be 
rich  enough  to  be  able  to  buy  another,  and  none  poor  enough 
to  be  forced  to  sell  himself.  ...  It  is  precisely  because  the 
force  of  circumstances  is  ever  tending  to  destroy  Equality 
that  the  force  of  legislation  should  always  tend  to  maintain 


198  A  Guildsmari’s  Interpretation  of  History 


it.”  Rousseau’s  attitude  towards  property  was  not  that 
of  the  Collectivist. 

It  will  make  the  position  clearer  to  say  that  the  ideal 
of  Rousseau  was  that  of  the  City  States  of  Greece,  which 
existed  independently  of  each  other  while  they  were  federated 
for  the  purpose  of  defence.  He  saw  that  this  meant  putting 
the  clock  back  ;  but  this  did  not  deter  him.  He  realized,  as 
all  men  do  whose  reasoning  faculties  have  not  been  atrophied 
by  the  idea  of  Progress,  that  any  fundamental  change  in 
the  social  system  involves  in  some  degree  a  return  to  a  former 
social  condition.  All  Socialist  ideas  imply  reversion,  but 
the  fact  that  Socialists  are  afraid  to  admit  it  has  led  them 
into  the  maze  of  intellectual  confusion  in  which  they  find 
themselves.  But  Rousseau  lived  in  an  age  when  men  were 
not  afraid  of  words,  and  so  boldly  advocated  a  return  to 
the  conditions  of  primitive  society.  In  an  earlier  work  he 
had  demanded  the  renunciation  of  cultivated  life  which  he 
asserted  led  to  “  a  distinction  of  the  talents  and  a  disparage¬ 
ment  of  the  virtues,”  in  favour  of  a  return  to  nature  which 
was  to  be  made  the  starting-point  for  a  nobler  form  of  exist¬ 
ence.  His  description  of  the  life  of  primitive  society  was  so 
vivid  and  full  of  detail,  while  it  gave  such  a  feeling  of  reality 
to  the  existence  of  a  golden  age  in  the  past,  that  Voltaire 
said  “  it  made  one  desire  to  walk  on  all  fours.”  Though 
Rousseau’s  description  was  a  work  of  pure  fiction — for  of 
primitive  man  he  knew  nothing — it  came  to  be  believed  in 
as  gospel  truth,  because  it  served  its  purpose  of  contrasting 
a  simple,  unsophisticated  mode  of  existence  with  the  arti¬ 
ficiality  and  corruption  of  France,  and  gave  emphasis  to 
his  denunciations  of  property,  privileges  and  tyranny. 
In  the  Social  Contract  his  enthusiasm  for  primitive  man 
appears  to  have  abated  somewhat.  Perhaps,  after  all, 
there  was  something  to  be  said  for  civilization.  It  was 
not  to  be  regarded  merely  as  a  disease.  If  many  natural 
advantages  are  lost,  equal  or  greater  ones  are  secured. 
Law  and  morality  replace  appetite  and  instincts  ;  moreover, 
there  are  certain  advantages  in  co-operation.  Hence,  though 
it  is  necessary  to  return  to  the  past,  he  considers  that  it  will 
not  be  necessary  to  return  to  any  state  of  society  prior  to 
the  civilization  of  early  Greece. 


The  French  Revolution 


199 


It  was  because  Rousseau  was  mistaken  as  to  the  historical 
nature  of  the  problem  which  confronted  society  that  he  was 
led  to  regard  the  Greek  States  as  models.  Remembering 
that  these  States  were  entirely  undermined  by  unregulated 
currency,  Rousseau,  to  have  been  consistent,  should  have 
demanded  the  abolition  of  currency.  That  he  did  not  is 
to  be  explained  by  the  circumstance  that  he  was  apparently 
as  ignorant  of  the  fact  that  unregulated  currency  had  de¬ 
stroyed  the  civilization  of  Greece  and  Rome  as  of  the  further 
fact  that  the  solution  of  this  problem  was  found  by  the 
Mediaeval  Guilds.  Had  he  known  these  facts,  the  course  of 
history  might  have  been  different.  Instead  of  seeking 
a  solution  that  was  primarily  political  he  would  have  sought 
one  that  was  primarily  economic.  He  v/ould  have  supported 
the  peasants  in  their  demand  for  the  re-establishment  of 
the  Just  Price,  and  would  have  considered  ways  and  means 
of  restoring  the  Guilds  to  maintain  it.  He  would,  moreover, 
have  seen  that  within  the  Guilds  the  people  were  sovereign 
in  the  Middle  Ages,  while  their  sovereignty  was  not  based 
upon  slavery,  as  was  the  case  with  the  sovereign  peoples 
of  Greece.  On  this  issue  Rousseau  was  not  honest  with 
himself.  Though  he  condemns  slavery,  he  glosses  over  the 
fact  that  the  States  which  he  exalted  as  models  were  based 
upon  slavery.  “  Slavery/'  he  says,  “  is  one  of  the  unfortunate 
inconveniences  of  civilized  society." 

The  technical  cause  of  the  confusion  in  which  Rousseau 
found  himself  is  to  be  found  in  the  revived  interest  in  Roman 
Law  which  had  established  the  tradition  of  thinking  about 
economic  problems  entirely  in  terms  of  property.  In  my 
chapter  on  Greece  and  Rome  I  drew  attention  to  the  mutual 
dependence  of  Roman  Law  and  an  unregulated  currency, 
pointing  out  that  Roman  Law  came  into  being  not  for  the 
purpose  of  securing  justice,  but  to  postpone  the  dissolution 
of  a  society  which  had  been  rendered  politically  unstable 
through  the  growth  of  capitalism — itself  the  consequence  of 
unregulated  currency.  Despairing  of  the  effort  to  secure 
justice,  the  Roman  jurists  addressed  themselves  to  the 
more  immediately  urgent  task  of  maintaining  order  by  fol¬ 
lowing  the  line  of  least  resistance.  Not  understanding  how 
to  regulate  currency  even  if  it  had  been  practicable  in  Rome, 


200  A  Guildsman’s  Interpretation  of  History 


they  sought  to  give  protection  and  security  to  private  property 
as  the  easiest  way  of  avoiding  continual  strife  among  neigh¬ 
bours.  The  consequence  of  this  was  that  when  after  the 
Reformation  thinkers  went  to  Roman  Law  for  guidance  in 
their  speculations  as  to  how  to  render  government  stable, 
the  tradition  became  established  of  thinking  about  social 
and  political  questions  primarily  in  terms  of  property  instead 
of  in  currency.  The  result  of  this  has  been  that  down  to 
this  day  social  theory  is  presented  statically  rather  than 
dynamically.  Rousseau’s  social  theory  was  no  exception  to 
this  rule.  It  did  not  deal  with  the  sequential  steps  which 
would  have  to  be  taken  towards  the  realization  of  his  ideal 
society,  but  presented  a  new  society  already  full  grown. 
This  limitation  of  Rousseau’s  theory  became  increasingly 
apparent  as  the  Revolution  developed.  Not  only  did  his 
constructive  ideas  bear  no  particular  relationship  to  the 
problems  which  had  to  be  met,  but  they  were  a  positive 
obstruction  in  the  path  of  their  solution,  by  filling  the  minds 
of  the  revolutionaries  with  a  priori  ideas  which  obscured 
the  real  issues.  The  Revolution  rapidly  became  a  collision 
between  theorists  fired  with  a  new  ideal  and  the  political, 
social  and  economic  conditions  of  which  they  had  no  com¬ 
prehension.  Not  comprehending  them,  they  sought  in 
vain  to  direct  the  course  of  events  until,  exasperated  by 
failure,  they  came  to  commit  crimes  of  which  they  had  no 
presentiment  at  the  beginning. 

Rousseau  misled  the  revolutionaries  by  focusing  atten¬ 
tion  upon  the  wrong  aspect  of  the  economic  problem.  He 
talked  about  property  and  ignored  currency.  I  make  bold 
to  say  that  the  centre  of  gravity  of  the  economic  problem 
is  not  in  property,  but  in  currency,  for  currency  is  the  vital 
thing,  the  thing  of  movement.  It  is  the  active  principle 
in  economic  development,  while  property  is  the  passive. 
It  is  true  that  profits  which  are  made  by  the  manipulation 
of  currency,  sooner  or  later  assume  the  form  of  property. 
All  the  same,  the  root  mischief  is  not  to  be  found  in  property 
but  in  unregulated  currency.  To  solve  the  problem  of 
currency  by  the  institution  of  a  Just  Price  under  a  system 
of  Guilds  for  the  regulation  of  exchanges,  and  the  adjust¬ 
ment  of  the  balance  between  demand  and  supply,  is  to  bring 


The  French  Revolution  201 


order  into  the  economic  problem  at  its  active  centre.  Having 
solved  the  problem  at  its  centre,  it  will  be  a  comparatively 
easy  matter  to  deal  with  property  which  lies  at  the  circum¬ 
ference.  Property-owners  would  be  able  to  offer  no  more 
effective  resistance  to  change  than  hitherto  landlordism 
has  been  able  to  offer  to  the  growth  of  capitalism.  By 
such  means  the  reconstruction  of  society  would  proceed  upon 
orderly  lines.  All  that  it  would  be  necessary  to  do  would 
be  for  the  democratic  movement  to  exert  a  steady  and 
constant  pressure  over  a  decade  or  so,  and  society  would  be 
transformed  without  so  much  as  a  riot,  much  less  a  revolution. 
But  to  begin  with  property  is  to  get  things  out  of  their  natural 
order,  for  it  is  to  proceed  from  the  circumference  to  the 
centre,  which  is  contrary  to  the  law  of  growth.  It  is  to 
precipitate  economic  confusion  by  dragging  society  up  by  its 
roots  ;  and  this  defeats  the  ends  of  revolution  by  strengthen¬ 
ing  the  hands  of  the  profiteer,  for  the  profiteer  thrives  on 
economic  confusion.  Of  what  use  is  it  to  seek  to  effect 
a  redistribution  of  wealth  before  the  profiteer  has  been  got 
under  control  ?  So  long  as  men  are  at  liberty  to  manipulate 
exchange,  they  will  manage  to  get  the  wealth  of  the  community 
into  their  hands.  This  is  no  idle  theory.  All  through  the 
French  Revolution,  as,  indeed,  according  to  reports,  in  the 
Russian  Revolution  of  to-day,  speculation  was  rife,  paper 
money  depreciated,  while  a  class  of  nouveaux  riches  came 
into  existence  and  the  Assemblies  were  powerless  against 
them.  Marat  might  call  for  “  the  accursed  brood  of  capital¬ 
ists,  stock-jobbers  and  monopolists  to  be  destroyed. ”  But 
it  was  easier  said  than  done.  For  these  men  exercised  a 
function  which  was  absolutely  indispensable  to  the  life  of 
the  community.  They  organized  distribution,  and  it  was 
because  the  leaders  of  the  Revolution  entirely  failed  to  see 
the  primacy  of  distribution  that  they  let  the  profiteers  in. 
Under  the  pressure  of  circumstances  the  Jacobins  decreed 
a  maximum  price  for  provisions.  But  its  effect  was  only  to 
cause  continual  dearth.  Though  the  Jacobins  could  terrorize 
the  Convention,  they  could  not  control  the  revolutionary 
profiteers.  For  the  control  of  currency  and  exchange, 
which  would  have  been  a  comparatively  simple  proposi¬ 
tion  at  the  start,  was  altogether  impracticable  when  the 


202  A  Guildsman'>s  Interpretation  of  History 


country  was  in  the  throes  of  revolution.  If  instead  of  begin¬ 
ning  with  the  destruction  of  Feudalism,  the  revolutionaries 
had  begun  with  the  regulation  of  currency  and  exchange,  the 
chaos  of  the  Revolution  would  have  been  avoided,  and 
Feudalism  would  have  fallen  later  as  dead  leaves  fall  from 
a  tree.  The  solution  of  the  social  problem,  as  of  every  other 
problem  in  this  universe,  resolves  itself  finally  into  one  of 
order.  Take  issues  in  their  natural  order  and  everything 
will  straighten  itself  out  beautifully,  all  the  minor  details 
or  secondary  parts  will  fall  into  their  proper  places.  But 
approach  these  same  issues  in  a  wrong  order  and  confusion 
results.  No  subsequent  adjustments  can  remedy  the  initial 
error.  This  principle  is  universally  true.  It  is  as  true 
of  writing  a  book,  of  designing  a  building,  as  of  conducting 
a  revolution.  The  secret  of  success  in  each  case  will  be 
found  finally  to  rest  upon  the  perception  of  the  order  in  which 
the  various  issues  should  be  taken. 

It  was  because  Rousseau  had  built  the  elaborate  super¬ 
structure  of  his  reasoning  upon  a  foundation  of  false  history 
that  he  was  driven  to  postulate  the  existence  of  something 
at  the  centre  of  society  which  he  termed  the  General  Will, 
and  upon  which  he  relied  to  usher  in  the  new  social  order. 
Exactly  what  he  meant  by  this  General  Will  is  most  difficult 
to  determine,  for  while  on  the  one  hand  he  exalts  it  into  a 
fetish  capable  of  performing  every  imaginable  kind  of  political 
miracle,  on  the  other  he  proceeds  to  qualify  his  original 
proposition  in  so  many  ways  as  almost  to  rob  it  of  any 
definite  meaning.  “  So  long/'  he  says,  “  as  a  number  of  men 
in  combination  are  considered  as  a  single  body  they  have  but 
one  will,  which  relates  to  the  common  preservation  and  the 
general  well-being.  In  such  a  case  all  the  forces  of  nature 
are  vigorous  and  simple,  and  its  principles  are  clear  and 
luminous  ;  it  has  no  confused  and  conflicting  interests  ; 
the  common  good  is  everywhere  plainly  manifest,  and  only 
good  sense  is  required  to  perceive  it.  Peace,  union  and 
equality  are  foes  to  political  subtleties.  Upright  and  simple- 
minded  men  are  hard  to  deceive  because  of  their  simplicity  ; 
allurements  and  refined  pretexts  do  not  impose  upon  them  ; 
they  are  not  even  cunning  enough  to  be  dupes.  ...  A 
State  thus  governed  needs  very  few  laws  ;  and  in  so  far  as 


The  French  Revolution 


203 


it  becomes  necessary  to  promulgate  new  ones  the  necessity 
is  universally  recognized.  The  first  man  to  propose  them 
only  gives  expression  to  what  all  have  previously  felt,  and 
neither  factions  nor  eloquence  will  be  needed  to  pass  into 
law  what  every  one  has  already  resolved  to  do,  so  soon  as 
he  is  sure  that  the  rest  will  act  as  he  does.”  The  General 
Will,  he  goes  on  to  say,  is  indestructible.  It  is  always  con¬ 
stant,  unalterable,  and  pure  ;  but  when  private  interests 
begin  to  make  themselves  felt,  it  is  subordinated  to  other 
wills  which  get  the  better  of  it.  After  telling  us  all  these 
fine  things  he  has  some  misgivings,  and  proceeds  :  “  the 

General  Will  is  always  right,  but  the  judgment  which  guides 
it  is  not  always  enlightened,”  and  that  “  there  is  no  general 
will  with  reference  to  a  particular  object.”  After  making 
these  qualifications  there  does  not  appear  to  be  very  much 
of  the  General  Will  left,  and  we  begin  to  wonder  what  was  at 
the  bottom  of  his  mind.  The  only  explanation  I  can  offer 
of  these  apparent  contradictions  is  that  the  General  Will 
is  something  which  relates  to  the  subliminal  consciousness 
of  mankind,  but  is  not  a  part  of  his  normal  consciousness. 
Mr.  de  Maeztu  says  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  General  Will, 
since  “  men  cannot  unite  immediately  among  one  another  ; 
they  unite  in  things,  in  common  values,  in  the  pursuit  of 
common  ends,”  1  and  Mr.  de  Ma^eztu,  I  think,  is  right. 

What  Rousseau  feared  came  about.  All  the  careful 
detailed  reservations  he  made  to  protect  possible  mis¬ 
applications  of  the  principles  he  enunciated  were  disregarded 
by  his  followers.  All  the  ideas  which  he  regarded  as  means 
to  ends  came  to  be  exalted  as  ends  in  themselves,  and  to 
be  believed  in  with  all  the  fervour  of  strong  religious  con¬ 
viction.  Nature,  the  Rights  of  Man,  Liberty,  Equality,  the 
Social  Contract,  hatred  of  tyrants  and  popular  sovereignty 
were  for  the  Jacobins  the  articles  of  a  faith  which  was  above 
and  beyond  discussion.  They  did  not  believe  these  things 
in  the  more  or  less  philosophic  spirit  in  which  Rousseau 
believed  them,  but  in  the  way  that  only  men  of  simple  and 
violent  temperaments  can  believe  things.  Their  firm  con¬ 
viction  made  them  the  driving  force  of  the  Revolution,  for 
it  gave  them  great  strength  of  will,  which  enabled  them 

1  Authority,  Liberty,  and  Function,  by  Ramiro  de  Maeztu. 


204  A  Guildsman’s  Interpretation  of  History 


completely  to  dominate  the  more  intelligent  but  weaker- 
willed  members  of  the  Assemblies,  while  it  created  a  kind 
of  revolutionary  religion  in  France  which  inspired  the 
armies  of  the  Revolution. 

In  the  Constituent  Assembly  the  Jacobins  were  a  small 
group,  and  at  no  time  were  they  very  numerous,  though  during 
the  Convention  they  dominated  France.  The  Revolution  had 
not  yet  got  its  stride.  This  first  Assembly  consisted  of  land¬ 
lords,  magistrates,  physicians,  and  lawyers.  It  was  what 
in  these  days  would  be  called  a  business  Government;  that  is, 
a  Government  of  men  who  wanted  to  see  things  changed 
politically,  but  not  economically,  who  believed  in  liberty, 
but  not  in  equality.  They  enjoyed  the  illusion  which  business 
men  generally  enjoy,  that  what  is  in  their  personal  interests 
is  necessarily  in  the  interests  of  the  community.  This 
limitation,  though  it  gives  annoyance  to  others,  may  not, 
under  normal  conditions,  have  serious  consequences,  but 
in  a  time  of  crisis  it  is  a  fatal  defect  for  a  class  who  seek  to 
wield  power,  for  it  raises  a  barrier  between  them  and  popular 
feeling.  So  it  was  that  the  Constituent  Assembly  forfeited 
the  confidence  of  the  people  by  two  of  their  actions.  They 
thought  they  could  decree  the  abolition  of  feudal  rights 
while  asking  the  peasants  to  pay  for  their  surrender,  and 
that  they  could  limit  the  franchise  to  property-owners 
while  men  were  preaching  daily  Liberty,  Equality  and 
Fraternity.  Their  attempt  to  distinguish  between  property- 
owners  whom  they  termed  active  citizens,  and  other  members 
of  the  community  whom  they  termed  passive  citizens,  was 
unfortunate  for  them.  For  this  distinction  was  open  to  an 
interpretation  the  exact  contrary  of  that  which  they  had 
intended.  Journalists  protested  that  those  who  stormed 
the  Bastille  and  cleared  the  lands  regarded  themselves  as 
the  active  citizens,  and  objected  to  being  treated  as  the  mere 
raw  material  of  a  revolution  for  the  benefit  of  others.  But 
such  protests  were  in  vain.  The  members  of  the  Constituent 
Assembly  were  entirely  out  of  touch  with  popular  feeling. 
And  they  remained  out  of  touch  until  the  people  of  Paris, 
armed  with  pikes,  invaded  the  Assembly  Hall  to  break  up 
their  deliberations — a  habit  which,  once  formed,  continued 
almost  daily  throughout  the  Revolution.  The  Convention, 


The  French  Revolution 


205 


while  under  the  influence  of  the  Girondins,  corrected  the 
blunder  of  the  Constituent  Assembly  by  removing  the  distinc¬ 
tion  between  the  active  and  passive  citizens ,  but  in  other 
respects  it  was  equally  out  of  touch  with  popular  sentiment. 
As  a  result,  power  in  the  Assembly  passed  entirely  into  the 
hands  of  the  Jacobins,  who,  whatever  their  shortcomings, 
at  least  enjoyed  the  confidence  of  the  people  of  Paris. 

The  rise  to  power  of  the  Jacobins — known  in  the  Conven¬ 
tion  as  the  Mountain  as  distinguished  from  the  Plain,  which 
designated  all  its  other  members — is  to  be  attributed  to 
many  causes,  but  the  principal  one  was  the  imperative 
necessity  of  firm  government.  The  Girondins,  who  had 
hitherto  led  the  Assembly,  were  Liberals  in  temperament, 
and  like  Liberals  all  the  world  over  they  had  little  sense  of 
reality.  They  were  hostile  to  a  strong  executive  in  the  name 
of  Liberty,  hostile  to  Paris  in  the  name  of  Federalism,  and 
hostile  to  the  economic  aspirations  of  the  people  in  the  name 
of  Order.  The  result  was  as  might  be  expected  :  they  were 
conquered  by  the  force  of  circumstances.  A  time  came  at 
length  when  the  growth  of  economic  anarchy  and  civil 
war  at  home,  combined  with  the  need  of  defending  the 
Republic  against  other  European  Powers,  demanded  strong 
and  vigorous  measures,  and  these  the  Girondins  were  unable 
to  supply.  Power  passed  into  the  hands  of  the  Jacobins, 
because  they  alone  were  capable  of  determined  action. 

The  situation  had  been  of  the  Jacobins’  own  creating. 
Earlier  on  they  had  been  the  means  of  bringing  about  the 
execution  of  the  King,  which  proved  to  be  the  turning-point 
of  the  Revolution,  for  not  only  did  it  bring  about  civil  war, 
but  armed  Europe  against  France.  In  order  to  save  the 
Republic  from  its  enemies  without,  and  from  disruption  within, 
the  Jacobins  resorted  to  the  most  ruthless  measures.  They 
massacred  people  wholesale.  In  the  Vendee  alone  it  is 
estimated  that  over  half  a  million  suffered  at  their  hands. 
Old  men,  women,  and  children  were  all  massacred,  and  villages 
and  crops  were  burned.  Yet  in  spite  of  all  their  savagery, 
despite  the  delegates  sent  with  guillotines  into  the  provinces 
and  the  Draconian  laws  which  they  enforced,  they  had  to 
struggle  perpetually  against  riots,  insurrections  and  con¬ 
spiracies.  But  the  reaction  upon  themselves  is  the  interest- 


206  A  Guildsman’s  Interpretation  of  History 


ing  sequel.  They  would  brook  no  opposition,  and  in  order 
to  carry  through  such  ruthless  measures  they  had  to  be 
equally  ruthless  with  their  critics.  It  was  in  order  to  rid 
themselves  of  them  that  they  instituted  the  Terror,  which, 
after  a  run  of  ten  months,  came  to  an  end  with  the  execu¬ 
tion  of  Robespierre  and  the  leaduig  Jacobins.  Not  that 
Robespierre  was  by  any  means  the  worst  offender.  On  the 
contrary,  his  influence  had  not  unfrequently  been  exerted 
in  favour  of  moderation.  At  a  time  when  to  be  considered 
an  “  Indulgent  ”  was  an  accusation  pointing  to  the  scaffold, 
he  successfully  opposed  the  arrest  of  seventy-three  members 
of  the  Convention,  saved  Catherine  Theot  and  her  com¬ 
panions,  and  defended  his  rival  Dantou  when  his  arrest  was 
first  suggested  ;  while  he  repeatedly  refused  to  sign  warrants 
for  intended  arrests,  and  had  earned  the  lasting  enmity  of 
Fouche,  Carrier,  Collot,  Tallien,  Billaud-Varennes  and  others 
by  his  denunciation  of  their  atrocities,  and  had  been  the 
means  of  effecting  their  return  from  the  provinces.  Tt 
was  the  action  of  these  men  that  immediately  led  to  his 
downfall.  So  intent  was  Robespierre  on  carrying  the 
system  of  virtue  to  its  logical  conclusion  that  a  time  came 
when  they  felt  their  lives  were  no  longer  safe,  and  so  they 
combined  with  the  Moderates  to  effect  his  overthrow. 
Robespierre  gave  them  the  opportunity.  Naturally  sus¬ 
picious,  he  complained  of  conspiracies,  and  his  over-confidence 
led  him  to  attempt  to  get  the  Assembly  to  vote  a  measure 
which  would  permit  deputies  to  be  sent  to  the  Revolutionary 
Tribunal  without  authorization  of  the  Assembly.  Certrin 
members,  feeling  that  Robespierre  was  aiming  at  them, 
and  who  had  therefore  nothing  to  lose,  met  this  proposal 
with  a  vigorous  opposition.  Such  determined  action 
broke  the  spell  that  Robespierre  had  cast  over  the  Assembfy. 
Members  who  had  been  afraid  were  afraid  no  longer,  and  the 
next  da}  the  attack  was  vigorously  renewed.  Robespierre 
tried  to  defend  himself,  but  was  met  with  cries  of  “  Down 
with  the  tyrant !  ”  From  that  moment  Robespierre  was  lost. 
Thanks  to  mental  contagion,  the  cry  instantly  became  general, 
and  his  voice  was  drowned  in  the  uproar.  Without  losing 
a  moment  the  Assembly  decreed  his  accusation  and  outlawed 
him.  He  appealed  to  the  Commune  of  Paris,  but  the  Conven- 


The  French  Revolution 


207 


tion  was  triumphant  against  his  supporters.  After  the  lapse 
of  a  few  days  Robespierre  and  his  band  of  Jacobins  to  the 
number  of  a  hundred  and  four  were  guillotined.  As  his 
name  had  become  popularly  associated  with  the  Terror,  his 
execution  was  interpreted  by  the  people  as  having  put 
an  end  to  it.  The  Committee  of  Public  Safety,  recognizing 
this,  acted  as  if  all  along  such  had  been  their  intention,  and 
the  Terror  came  to  an  end. 

But  there  were  deeper  reasons  than  personal  enmities 
to  account  for  the  fall  of  Robespierre.  The  Revolution  had 
entered  its  decadent  phase.  When  the  property  of  the 
nobles  and  clergy  had  been  confiscated,  instead  of  being 
returned  to  the  people  to  be  held  communally,  it  was  sold 
by  the  Assemblies  to  private  individuals  when  they  were 
in  need  of  money.  These  large  estates  were  on  sale  for 
several  years  on  terms  extremely  favourable  to  purchasers, 
and  had  not  only  been  bought  by  such  peasants  as  could  get 
hold  of  money,  army  contractors  and  food  profiteers,  but 
by  members  of  the  Convention  itself ;  while,  moreover, 
thousands  of  Jacobins  had  secured  posts  under  the  Govern¬ 
ment  for  themselves.  It  was  thus  that  the  Revolution  had 
created  new  vested  interests  and  the  corruption  had  not  only 
penetrated  the  Convention  but  the  Jacobin  Party  itself. 
Honest  Republicans  foand  themselves  helpless  against,  it. 
Robespierre  was  oblivious  to  these  changes.  He  remained 
as  upright  and  fanatical  as  ever,  never  wavering  in  his  revolu¬ 
tionary  faith,  for  ever  reminding  the  people  of  the  principles 
of  Republicanism,  and  threatening  those  keenest  after  the 
spoils  writh  the  guillotine.  So  a  coalition  came  into  existence 
which  regarded  the  overthrow  of  Robespierre  as  the  first 
point  to  be  gained.  They  had  supported  him  so  long  as  they 
feared  a  return  of  the  ancien  regime ,  but  when  the  Allies  had 
been  defeated  they  had  no  further  use  for  him.  “  What/' 
said  they,  “  is  the  good  of  a  revolutionary  government  now 
that  the  war  is  over  ?  ”  The  ends  of  the  Revolution,  so  far 
as  the  great  mass  of  its  supporters  were  concerned,  having 
been  attained,  they  desired  it  to  be  brought  to  an  end  and  to 
be  confirmed  in  the  possession  of  their  riches.  It  was  because 
Robespierre  failed  to  realize  the  change  that  had  taken  place 
that  he  eventually  came  to  grief.  The  only  true  Republicans 


208  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


now  left  were  the  young  men,  and  they  were  to  be  found  in 
the  armies  spreading  the  revolutionary  ideas  over  Europe. 

The  fall  of  Robespierre  prepared  the  way  for  the  counter¬ 
revolution  that  took  place  a  little  over  a  twelvemonth  after 
his  death.  It  took  the  form  of  a  rebellion  of  the  nouveaux  riche . 
During  the  course  of  the  Revolution  production  steadily 
declined,  and  the  wholesale  issue  of  paper  money  had  depre¬ 
ciated  the  currency  to  such  an  extent  that  the  general  want 
was  terrible.  A  time  came  when  Republican  idealism 
vanished  before  the  general  demand  for  food  and  security, 
and  this  played  into  the  hands  of  the  rich,  who  asserted  that 
on  the  maintenance  of  property  depended  the  cultivation 
of  the  fields,  all  production,  every  means  of  work  and  the 
whole  social  order.  The  absence  of  it,  they  contended,  had 
resulted  in  a  general  want  of  confidence  on  the  part  of  pro¬ 
ducers,  merchants  and  traders,  and  was  responsible  for  the 
economic  confusion  and  depression.  Indeed,  from  the  point 
of  view  of  the  Republicans  there  was  no  answer.  They  had 
rejected  the  idea  of  the  communal  ownership  of  land  in  favour 
of  private  ownership.  They  had  sold  the  confiscated  estates, 
and  it  was  now  up  to  the  Government  to  guarantee  the  new 
owners  in  the  possession  of  their  lands.  The  counter-revolu¬ 
tion  was  successful,  confidence  was  restored  and  trade  revived. 
It  was  thus  that  power  passed  out  of  the  hands  of  the  nobility 
into  the  hands  of  the  bourgeoisie.  The  Revolution  had 
miscarried. 

As  the  Revolution  proceeded,  power  became  concentrated 
in  fewer  and  fewer  hands.  The  Committee  of  Public  Safety, 
which  had  dominated  the  Convention,  consisted  of  eight 
members.  Under  the  Directory  which  followed,  the  execu¬ 
tive  power  was  vested  in  the  hands  of  five  men.  This  was 
provided  for  in  its  constitution,  the  framing  of  which  was 
the  last  act  of  the  Convention.  In  so  far  as  the  change  was 
accompanied  by  a  change  of  policy  it  was  in  the  direction 
of  not  seeking  to  reorganize  France  but  to  leave  it  to  organize 
itself,  yet  though  the  Directory  left  France  to  make  its  own 
economic  readjustment,  it  was  quite  as  ruthless  as  the 
Convention  in  its  efforts  to  preserve  the  Republic,  for  it 
had  to  struggle  against  a  succession  of  conspiracies  against 
its  power.  Recognizing  that  a  revival  of  Catholicism  was 


The  French  Revolution 


209 


taking  place,  the  Directors  imagined  that  the  priests  were 
conspiring  against  them  and  deported  in  one  year  nearly 
fifteen  hundred  of  them  under  conditions  which  gave  them 
little  chance  of  survival,  to  say  nothing  of  large  numbers 
who  were  summarily  executed,  for  though  the  Terror  was 
abandoned,  their  methods  were  no  less  sanguinary.  But 
in  spite  of  their  efforts  things  went  for  them  steadily 
from  bad  to  worse.  Finance,  administration,  everything, 
in  fact,  was  crumbling,  until  at  length  a  point  was  reached 
when  the  Directors,  feeling  that  things  could  not  go  on  much 
longer,  themselves  sought  a  dictator  who  was  at  the  same 
time  capable  of  restoring  order  and  protecting  them.  This 
is  the  explanation  of  the  coup  d'etat  which  placed  Napoleon 
in  power.  It  was  arranged  by  the  Directors  themselves 
as  the  only  escape  from  an  impossible  situation. 

It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  Napoleon  overthrew 
the  Revolution.  On  the  contrary,  he  ratified  and  consolidated 
it.  As  early  as  1795,  at  the  end  of  the  Convention,  the  idea 
had  been  canvassed  of  restoring  the  monarchy,  but  Louis 
XVIII  having  been  tactless  enough  to  declare  that  he  would 
restore  the  ancien  regime  in  its  entirety,  return  all  property 
to  its  original  owners  and  punish  the  men  of  the  Revolution, 
put  himself  out  of  court  for  the  position.  Indeed,  the 
Royalists  must  have  been  impossible  people.  Even  Le 
Bon  says  :  “  The  Royalists  gave  proof  during  the  whole 
of  the  Revolution  of  an  incapacity  and  narrowness  of  mind 
which  justified  most  of  the  measures  taken  against  them.” 
The  Monarchy  being  impossible,  it  was  necessary  to  find 
a  general.  Only  one  existed  whose  name  carried  weight 
— Bonaparte.  The  campaign  of  Italy  had  made  him  famous. 
He  had  been  repeatedly  pressed  by  the  most  influential 
and  enlightened  generals  to  place  himself  at  the  head  of  the 
Republic,  but  he  refused  to  act  upon  their  advice.  He 
saw  very  clearly  the  difficulties  which  would  beset  him  if 
he  acted  prematurely.  He  saw  that  the  task  of  rebuilding 
France  was  impossible  unless  he  were  in  a  position  to  exercise 
absolute  power  in  order  that  measures  might  be  carried  through 
with  the  greatest  possible  speed,  which,  of  course,  was  impos¬ 
sible  if  every  measure  had  to  be  preceded  by  a  long  discussion 
in  the  Assemblies.  He  saw,  moreover,  that  he  must  be 

14 


210  A  Giiildsmari* s  Interpretation  of  History 


beyond  the  reach  of  parties,  and  so  he  preferred  to  wait 
until  the  Directorate  itself  should  seek  his  assistance.  Con¬ 
scious  of  the  fact  that  his  ideas  upon  the  art  of  governing 
differed  fundamentally  from  theirs,  he  refused  to  have  any¬ 
thing  to  do  with  the  government  of  France  until  they  were 
willing  to  allow  him  to  govern  in  his  own  way,  and  he  had 
sufficient  insight  to  see  that  a  time  was  bound  to  come  when 
conditions  would  have  reached  such  a  pass  that  they  would 
be  willing  to  grant  him  his  terms. 

Napoleon  reserved  to  himself  the  right  of  initiating  all 
laws,  and  he  restricted  the  duties  of  the  Assemblies  to 
confirming  or  rejecting  them.  Yet  while  he  insisted  upon 
having  the  last  word  in  the  framing  of  all  new  laws,  he  always 
conferred  with  the  two  other  Consuls  with  whom  he  was 
associated  before  proceeding  even  with  the  most  trivial 
measures.  He  chose  his  agents  of  government  indifferently 
from  the  Royalists,  Girondins,  or  Jacobins,  having  regard 
only  to  their  capacities.  But  although  in  his  Council  he 
sought  the  assistance  of  eminent  jurists,  he  appears  to  have 
been  always  up  against  them,  for  he  is  reported  to  have  said 
that  any  measure  which  is  promoted  for  the  public  good  is 
sure  to  meet  with  the  opposition  of  lawyers.  This  fact 
is  not  surprising  when  we  remember  that  lawyers  are  trained 
in  the  tenets  of  Roman  Law,  which  is  individualistic  in  inten¬ 
tion,  while  measures  for  the  public  good  are  necessarily 
communal  in  aim. 

I  said  that  Napoleon  ratified  and  consolidated  the  Revolu¬ 
tion.  His  authority  speedily  put  an  end  to  the  Parisian 
insurrections  and  attempts  at  monarchical  resistance  and 
restored  moral  unity  where  there  had  only  been  division  and 
hatred.  He  provided  work  for  the  unemployed  in  building, 
the  construction  of  military  roads,  and  in  minor  ways,  such 
as  giving  large  orders  for  furniture  for  the  Tuilleries.  He 
was  wise  enough  to  see  that  no  restoration  of  the  ancien 
regime  was  possible,  and  so  made  no  such  foolish  attempt, 
for  he  saw  that  order  could  only  be  restored  on  the  assump¬ 
tion  that  those  in  possession  of  the  land  were  confirmed 
in  their  ownership.  With  the  law  passed  by  the  Convention 
enacting  that  all  estates  should  be  divided  up  at  death  equally 
among  the  children  of  the  owner  he  did  not  interfere,  nor 


The  French  Revolution 


211 


with  many  other  useful  measures  which  had  been  enacted 
during  the  Revolution,  such  as  the  establishment  of  the 
metric  system  and  the  creation  of  important  colleges.  Indeed, 
all  through  the  Revolution,  much  useful  work  of  this  kind 
was  done  by  technical  committees,  in  which  the  majority 
of  the  members  of  the  Assemblies  took  refuge  in  order  to- 
escape  from  the  political  conflicts  which  threatened  their 
lives. 

The  only  statesman  in  history  whose  work  may  be  com-  • 
pared  with  Napoleon  is  Augustus,  since  he  undertook  the 
task  of  reorganizing  the  Roman  Empire  after  the  Civil  Wars 
as  Napoleon  did  France  after  the  Revolution.  They  both 
had  recourse  to  similar  methods  of  government.  Both 
sought  a  solution  in  the  organization  of  a  highly  centralized 
bureaucracy.  Though  we  have  no  love  for  bureaucracy, 
we  yet  must  recognize  that  when  the  traditions  of  a  country 
have  been  destroyed  there  is  no  other  way  of  delivering  it 
from  anarchy,  and  the  popularity  of  the  Napoleonic  regime 
is  a  sure  witness  that  though  it  was  despotic  it  could  not  have 
been  so  intolerable  as  that  which  the  people  had  endured 
during  the  Revolution. 

The  French  Revolution  does  not  appear  to  me  to  be  a 
thing  to  be  defended  or  denounced,  but  to  be  studied,  for 
it  is  a  rich  field  for  the  study  of  economics  and  psychology. 
We  should  aim  at  understanding  it  in  order  that  we  may 
profit  by  its  mistakes.  The  convulsions  of  the  Revolution 
were  due  to  the  fact  that  it  attempted  an  impossible  task. 
The  revolutionists  thought  society  could  be  reconstructed 
anew  on  a  purely  theoretical  foundation,  not  understanding 
that  the  basis  of  every  social  order  is  to  be  found  in  certain 
traditions,  and  that  it  is  only  possible  to  reshape  them  within 
definite  limits,  for  society  can  only  exist  by  imposing  certain 
restraints,  laws,  manners  and  customs  to  constitute  a  check 
upon  the  natural  instincts  of  barbarism  which  never  entirely 
disappear.  The  revolutionary  gospel  of  nature,  by  removing 
these  restraints,  without  which  no  society  can  exist,  trans¬ 
formed  a  political  society  into  a  barbarian  horde,  for,  misled 
by  Rousseau,  they  did  not  understand  that  the  aim  of  civiliza¬ 
tion  was  to  escape  from  nature  and  not  to  return  to  it.  Hence 
it  was  that  while  the  Revolution  had  its  moral  sanction 


212  A  Gaildsmari* s  Interpretation  of  History 


in  the  demand  for  the  redress  of  certain  definite  social 
grievances,  the  feeling  of  unrest  was  exploited  by  idealists 
and  theorists  in  an  attempt  to  realize  an  unrealizable  thing. 
Among  other  things,  the  events  of  the  Revolution  gave 
the  lie  to  what  might  be  called  the  spontaneous  creation 
theory  of  democracy — the  idea  that  the  will  of  the  people 
is  omnipotent  and  final — for  democracy  cannot  spontaneously 
create  itself.  Democracy  will  arrive  when  it  knows  how  to 
choose  the  right  ideas  and  not  a  day  before ,  for  there  is  a  law 
of  gravitation  in  human  affairs  which  is  as  constant  as  the 
law  of  gravitation  in  the  physical  universe,  and  which  all 
who  aspire  to  govern  society  must  obey.  It  was  because 
the  revolutionists  did  not  understand  this  that  the  Revolu¬ 
tion  ended  by  establishing  not  the  sovereign  people,  but  a 
bureaucratic  despotism. 

It  is  remarkable  how  slow  mankind  is  to  learn  by 
experience.  A  crisis  has  overtaken  the  modern  world  which 
has  many  parallels  with  the  crisis  which  overtook  France 
before  the  Revolution,  and  yet  with  the  experience  of  the 
French  Revolution  to  guide  us,  there  is  little  or  no 
attempt  to  learn  the  lessons  which  it  has  to  teach.  On 
the  one  hand  we  have  a  governing  class,  crying  “  Peace, 
peace,”  When  there  is  no  peace,  as  jealous  of  maintain¬ 
ing  their  privileges  as  the  French  nobility,  and  as  un¬ 
willing  as  them  to  meet  the  need  of  additional  taxation 
and  equally  blind  to  the  inevitable  consequences  of 
their  short-sightedness.  On  the  other  hand,  just  as  in 
France  there  was  a  movement  of  peasants  groping  its  way 
back  to  Medievalism  demanding  the  Just  Price,  so  we  have 
a  popular  movement  on  a  similar  quest  demanding  a  fixed 
price  and  the  control  of  profiteers.  Just  as  this  move¬ 
ment  back  to  Medievalism  was  frustrated  by  the  French 
intellectuals  who  exploited  the  popular  unrest  in  the 
interests  of  impossible  ideals,  so  we  have  the  Socialist 
Movement  doing  just  the  same  thing.  For  in  all  the 
big  fundamental  things  there  is  little  to  choose  between 
the  Socialists  to-day  and  the  French  Revolutionaries. 
Both  have  got  their  ideas  upside  down.  Rousseau  made 
morality  dependent  upon  Law,  while  Marx  made  it  dependent 
lipon  economic  condition.  In  theory  this  is  a  difference  ; 


The  French  Revolution 


213 


in  practice  it  is  not,  for  both  make  morality  dependent 
upon  the  maintenance  of  administrative  machinery.  Both 
concentrate  upon  property  and  ignore  currency.  Both 
search  for  a  fool-proof  State.  And  so  it  is  in  respect 
of  the  whole  range  of  Socialist  ideas.  They  differ  from 
Rousseau  only  in  being  one  degree  further  removed  from 
reality  ;  for  Rousseau  did  realize  that  the  basis  of  society 
must  rest  upon  agriculture,  but  Socialists  to-day  appear  to 
have  forgotten  it.  The  difference  of  their  ideas  regarding 
property  is  a  matter  of  minor  importance,  since  the  more 
they  differ  the  more  they  are  alike.  They  are  alike  in  their 
belief  that  evil  resides  finally  in  institutions  and  not  in 
men,  and  in  their  faith  absolute  in  the  natural  perfection 
of  mankind. 


CHAPTER  XIV 


CAPITALISM  AND  THE  GUILDS 

With  the  French  Revolution  and  the  wars  that  followed 
it  there  fell  what  remained  in  Western  Europe  of  the  old 
Mediaeval  Order.  Henceforth  political  thought  no  longer 
troubles  itself  with  the  issue  of  Church  and  State  but  with 
Capitalism  which  becomes  the  dominating  power  in  the  world. 
It  will  be  necessary  therefore  for  us,  before  proceeding  further 
with  the  political  problem,  to  retrace  our  steps  to  watch  the 
rise  of  capitalist  industry. 

Capitalism,  as  we  saw,  had  its  origin  in  the  growth  of 
foreign  trade,  which  offered  merchants  abundant  oppor¬ 
tunities  for  making  profits  by  the  manipulation  of  currency, 
unchecked  by  Guild  regulations.  But  capitalist  exploitation 
began  on  the  land,  when  the  merchants  began  to  invest  the 
wealth  they  had  accumulated  in  land,  and  proceeded  to 
convert  tillage  into  pasturage.  That  such  a  development 
was  possible  was  due,  as  we  saw,  to  Roman  Law,  which 
corrupted  the  old  Feudal  order  by  instituting  private  owner¬ 
ship  in  land.  Apart  from  Roman  Law,  the  Feudal  system 
would  have  been  transformed,  for  the  spread  of  currency 
into  rural  areas  had  gradually  undermined  its  old  stability 
by  substituting  money  payments  for  payments  in  kind. 
But  the  fact  that  the  transformation  proceeded  from  Feudal¬ 
ism  to  landlordism  and  capitalism  instead  of  from  Feudalism 
to  agricultural  Guilds,  which  would  have  regulated  currency 
by  a  system  of  fixed  prices  such  as  obtained  in  the  towns, 
was  due  entirely  to  Roman  Law,  which,  by  instituting  private 
property  in  land,  paved  the  way  to  capitalist  exploitation. 
Roman  Law,  then,  created  capitalism,  and  capitalism,  we 
shall  see,  destroyed  the  Guilds. 

From  having  commercialized  agriculture,  capitalists 

214 


Capitalism  and  the  Guilds 


21 5 


turned  their  attention  to  the  capture  of  industry.  In  the 
towns,  capitalist  exploitation  was  impossible,  for  the  detailed 
regulations  of  the  Guilds  covered  every  condition  of  production. 
But  outside  of  the  towns  in  the  rural  areas  no  such  regulations 
existed.  The  capitalist  there  was  at  liberty  to  do  as  he 
pleased.  He  could  manufacture  what  he  liked,  use  inferior 
material,  pay  low  wages  and  sell  at  whatever  price  he  liked, 
and  there  was  no  one  to  stop  him.  The  capitalists  who  had 
taken  to  sheep-farming  were  not  long  in  turning  such  cir¬ 
cumstances  to  their  advantage.  They  employed  many  of 
those  whom  they  evicted  from  their  holdings  in  the  manu¬ 
facture  of  cloth  and  articles  made  from  it.  It  was  thus 
there  came  into  existence  that  “  domestic  system  ”  of  indus¬ 
try  which  was  destined  to  be  the  destruction  of  the  Guilds. 
As  early  as  the  fourteenth  century  the  Guilds  began  to 
feel  the  competition  of  this  domestic  industry.  The  Guilds- 
men  complained  that  the  goods  so  produced  were  made  of 
inferior  material ;  that  one  master  would  employ  many 
journeymen,  have  too  many  apprentices,  and  pay  them  a 
lower  wage  than  was  allowed  by  the  Guilds,  while  some 
trades,  as,  for  instance,  the  cappers  and  fullers,  began  to 
suffer  from  the  competition  of  wares  produced  by  machinery 
driven  by  water-mills.  This  led  to  so  much  improverish- 
ment  among  the  craftsmen  of  the  towns  that  fulling-mills 
were  forbidden  by  statute  in  1483. 

Not  only  were  the  Guilds  at  a  disadvantage  in  meeting 
such  competition  owing  to  the  high  standard  of  quality 
which  they  existed  to  uphold,  but  they  were  further  handi¬ 
capped  by  the  fact  that  the  towns  came  in  for  taxation  which 
manufacturers  outside  of  the  towns  were  able  to  escape. 
“  The  pressure  of  the  Apprenticeship  Act  of  Henry  IV,  the 
heavy  assessment  which  they  paid  for  the  wars  with  France, 
and  for  Henry  VII’s  unnecessary  exactions,  and  lastly, 
the  regulations  made  by  the  Guilds  with  regard  to  apprentices 
and  journeymen,  were  all  telling  against  the  old  corporate 
towns ;  they  were  at  a  disadvantage  as  compared  with 
neighbouring  villages,  and  there  was  in  consequence  a 
considerable  displacement  of  industry  from  old  centres 
to  new  ones,  or  to  suburbs/ ’  1  During  the  fifteenth  century 
1  Growth  of  English  Industry  and  Commerce,  by  W.  Cunningham,  pp.  460-1. 


216  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


a  general  decay  of  English  towns  set  in.  Migration  was  no 
longer  from  the  country  to  the  towns,  but  from  the  towns 
back  to  the  country,  and  with  this  change  there  came  the 
decay  of  the  Guilds  which  had  grown  up  within  the  corporate 
towns. 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  newer  regulations  of 
the  Guilds  which  were  regarded  as  tyrannical,  and  which 
we  hear  of  in  the  fifteenth  century,  were  brought  about  by  % 
the  desire  of  those  already  in  the  Guilds  to  protect  them¬ 
selves  against  the  competition  of  the  rising  capitalist  industry. 
At  an  earlier  date,  it  had  been  possible  for  every  journey¬ 
man  in  the  Guild  to  look  forward  to  a  day  when  he  would 
be  able  to  set  up  in  business  on  his  own  account  as  a  master. 
But  now,  when  the  monopoly  of  the  Guilds  was  clearly  break¬ 
ing  down  before  the  rise  of  capitalist  industry,  and  the 
masters  were  beginning  to  feel  the  pressure  of  competition, 
they  began  to  frame  regulations  not  with  an  eye  to  the 
interests  of  the  craft  as  a  whole,  which  was  beyond  their 
power,  but  solely  to  protect  their  own  individual  interests. 
Such  undoubtedly  was  the  origin  of  the  grievance  of  the 
journeymen,  for  which  they  obtained  redress  in  1536,  whereby, 
on  becoming  apprentices,  they  were  made  to  swear  upon 
oath  not  to  set  up  in  business  in  the  towns  without  the  consent 
and  licence  of  the  masters,  wardens  and  fellowship  of  their 
Guild,  upon  pain  of  forfeiting  their  freedom  or  like  penalty. 
One  of  the  results  of  this  restriction  was  to  aggravate  the 
tendency  of  journeymen  to  withdraw  from  the  towns  and 
set  up  shop  in  the  villages  where  they  were  outside  of  Guild 
jurisdiction.  To  do  this  was  often  their  only  chance  of 
getting  employment,  for  the  competition  of  the  rural  indus¬ 
tries  inclined  the  masters  more  and  more  to  overstock  their 
shops  with  an  undue  proportion  of  apprentices. 

The  growth  of  such  abuses  demonstrated  clearly  that  the 
craft  Guilds  were  breaking  down  before  the  rise  of  capitalist 
industry  ;  and  it  became  evident  that  if  industry  was  to 
continue  to  be  subject  to  regulation,  the  Guild  system  would 
need  to  be  reorganized  upon  national  lines,  or,  in  other  words, 
that  Guild  regulation  should  be  made  co-extensive  with 
industry  and  the  various  local  Guilds  linked  up  or  federated 
into  national  ones.  Some  such  general  notion  appears  to 


Capitalism  and  the  Guilds 


217 


have  inspired  the  attempts  at  Guild  reorganization  by 
Henry  VII  and  Henry  VIII,  who  tried  to  get  the  Guilds 
placed  entirely  under  the  control  of  public  authorities 
by  enacting  that  in  the  future  all  Guild  ordinances  should 
be  approved  by  the  justices.  This  was  the  one  reform 
which  complainants  had  demanded  in  1376  and  1473,  as 
well  as  from  the  Tudors.  Subject  to  such  control,  the 
Guilds  were  encouraged.  But  the  measures  they  took 
were  altogether  inadequate  to  cope  with  the  economic 
situation  which  was  developing.  Instead  of  seeking  to 
establish  a  national  system  of  Guilds,  they  merely  extended 
certain  local  privileges,  giving  certain  Guilds  the  right  to 
search  in  rural  areas  within  a  certain  radius  of  the  towns. 
Justices  of  the  peace  were  to  appoint  searchers  for  the  shires. 

We  can  easily  imagine  why  such  measures  were  ineffective. 
Capitalism  had  already  got  a  firm  foothold,  and  it  could 
not  be  brought  under  control  except  by  the  most  determined 
action  on  the  part  of  the  authorities,  and  justices  of  the 
peace  would  not  be  the  kind  of  people  to  act  in  such  a  way. 
If  regulations  are  going  to  be  enforced,  those  empowered 
to  enforce  them  must  be  made  to  suffer  if  they  neglect  in 
their  duty,  as  is  the  case  with  democratically  constituted 
Guilds.  Such  Guilds  might  have  been  established  in  the 
rural  areas  at  the  time  of  the  Great  Revolt.  But  the 
opportunity  which  then  presented  itself  was  lost.  The 
peasants  threw  away  their  opportunity  when  they  demanded 
the  liberty  to  buy  and  sell  instead  of  the  protection  of  Guilds, 
and  now  the  problem  was  not  such  a  simple  one.  The  develop¬ 
ment  of  foreign  trade  made  the  fixing  and  regulating  of 
prices  an  extremely  difficult  one,  and  nothing  short  of  a 
great  popular  movement  demanding  such  reforms  would 
have  sufficed  to  render  such  measures  practicable.  But 
no  such  movement  existed.  The  peasants,  who  had  been 
driven  off  the  land  to  make  room  for  sheep,  resented  the 
monopolies  of  the  Guilds.  They  had  no  idea  of  the  value 
of  their  services  in  regulating  currency,  and  welcomed  action 
which  removed  their  monopoly. 

The  Guilds  received  their  death-blow  when  they  found 
themselves  no  longer  able  to  fix  the  prices  of  commodities, 
for  everything  turns  upon  this.  If  prices  can  be  fixed, 


218  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


then  it  is  a  comparatively  easy  matter  to  enforce  a  standard 
of  quality  and  maintain  the  internal  discipline  of  the  Guilds, 
but  if  prices  cannot  be  fixed,  then  a  standard  of  quality  cannot 
be  enforced,  and  the  Guilds’  jurisdiction  over  their  members 
tends  to  become  restricted  within  increasingly  narrow 
limits.  The  Guilds  found  themselves  unable  to  determine 
prices  during  the  sixteenth  century.  In  1503  they  lost  their 
autonomy  in  this  respect,  when  it  was  enacted  that  any 
change  in  the  price  of  wrares  had  to  be  “  approved  by  the 
Chancellor,  Treasurer  of  England  and  Chief  Justices  of  either 
Bench,  or  three  of  them  ;  or  before  both  the  Justices  of 
Assizes  in  their  circuit.”  1 *  But  what  finally  broke  the 
monopoly  of  the  Guilds  was  the  growing  desire  of  the  public 
to  have  prices  fixed  by  the  haggling  of  the  market .3  No 
doubt  they  had  acquired  this  taste  through  buying  the 
products  of  the  capitalist  industry,  which  was  subject  to 
no  regulation  ;  and  they  came  to  demand  the  same  terms 
from  the  Guild  masters,  who,  presumably,  suffering  from 
competition,  were  unable  to  offer  effective  resistance.  But 
there  was  a  deeper  cause  for  the  change.  The  moral  sanction 
of  the  Just  Price  had  been  undermined  by  the  lawyers,  who 
maintained  the  right  of  every  man  to  make  the  best  bargain 
he  could — a  right  which  was  recognized  in  the  Justinian 
Code.  St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  in  challenging  the  lawyers, 
defended  the  principle  of  the  Just  Price  on  purely  moral 
grounds.  He  failed  altogether  to  perceive  its  economic 
significance,  contending  that  “  human  law  can  only  prohibit 
what  would  break  up  society.  Other  wrong  acts  it  treats 
as  quasi-lawful  in  the  sense  that  while  not  approving  them, 
it  does  not  punish  them  ” — a  strange  conclusion  to  come  to, 
considering  how  ruthlessly  profiteering  all  through  the 
Middle  Ages  was  suppressed,  and  that  failure  to  suppress 
it  has  in  these  days  nearly  broken  society  up.  It  is  thus 
we  see  the  economic  significance  of  the  Guilds  was  not 
understood,  and  they  had  no  official  defenders. 3  From  this 
time  onwards  the  Guilds  lose  their  public  functions.  In 
the  seventeenth  century,  journeymen  were  excluded  from 

1  Ashley,  vol.  i.  part  ii.  p.  159. 

a  Ibid.,  vol  i.  part  ii.  p.  160. 

3  See  Ashley,  vol.  i.  part  i.  pp.  135-6. 


Capitalism  and  the  Guilds 


219 


their  membership,  and  they  continue  as  societies  of  employers. 
Two  or  three,  even  a  dozen  occupations,  become  united  in 
one  company  (for  they  cease  to  be  called  Guilds),  which  bears 
the  name  of  the  occupation  followed  by  the  more  influential 
citizens.  Such  companies  continue  to  exist  to  this  day 
in  old  towns  in  the  provinces,  as  well  as  in  London,  and 
have  given  rise  to  the  various  Chambers  of  Commerce  of  our 
day.  The  property  in  the  possession  of  these  companies 
to-day  is  the  property  that  remained  in  the  possession 
of  the  Guilds  after  the  confiscations  made  under  the  Chantries 
Bill  (1547),  in  the  reign  of  Edward  VI.  This  Bill  did  not 
attack  the  Guilds  as  economic  organizations,  as  is  commonly 
supposed,  nor  did  it  seek  to  confiscate  the  whole  of  the  pro¬ 
perty  of  the  Guilds,  but  only  such  part  of  their  revenues 
as  had  already  been  devoted  to  certain  specified  religious 
purposes.  A  great  part  of  their  wealth  had  been  spent 
in  providing  masses  for  the  souls  of  the  deceased  brethren, 
and  it  was  the  lands  whose  revenues  were  spent  on  such 
purposes  that  were  confiscated.  The  revenues  of  the  craft 
companies  devoted  to  social  and  charitable  purposes  remained 
with  the  Guilds.  All  the  same  “  the  disendowment  of  religion 
in  the  misteries  evidently  accelerated  the  transformation 
of  the  system  ;  for  it  removed  one  strong  bond  of  union 
among  the  members,  and  limited  their  common  efforts  to 
the  range  of  their  material  interests.”  1 

The  Elizabethan  Statute  of  Apprentices,  passed  in  1563, 
may  perhaps  be  regarded  as  an  honest  attempt  to  save 
something  from  the  wreck.  The  Mediaeval  policy  of  regu¬ 
lating  prices  having  broken  down,  it  sought  to  protect  the 
position  of  the  skilled  worker  from  deteriorating  under 
competition. 

“  According  to  it  no  one  could  lawfully  exercise,  either 
as  master  or  as  journeyman,  any  art,  mystery,  or  manual 
occupation,  except  he  had  been  brought  up  therein  seven 
years,  at  least,  as  an  apprentice.  Every  householder  dwell¬ 
ing  in  a  city,  town-corporate  or  market  town,  might  take 
apprentices  for  seven  years  at  least.  But  only  those  youths 
might  be  taken  as  apprentices  whose  parents  possessed  a 
certain  fortune  ;  and  none  could  be  bound  but  those  who 

1  Ashley,  vol.  i.  part  ii.  p.  158. 


220  A  Guildsman’s  Interpretation  of  History 


were  under  twenty-one  years  of  age.  Whoever  had  three 
apprentices  must  keep  one  journeyman  ;  and  for  every 
other  apprentice  above  three,  one  other  journeyman.  As 
to  journeymen,  it  was  enacted  that,  in  most  trades,  no 
person  should  retain  a  servant  under  one  whole  year,  and  no 
servant  was  to  depart  or  be  put  away  but  upon  a  quarter’s 
warning.  The  hours  of  work  were  fixed  by  the  Act  to 
about  twelve  in  summer,  and  from  day-dawn  till  night  in 
winter.  Wages  were  to  be  assessed  yearly  by  the  justices 
of  the  peace  or  the  town  magistrates,  at  every  general  session 
first  to  be  holden  after  Easter.  The  same  authorities  were 
to  settle  all  disputes  between  masters  and  apprentices,  and 
protect  the  latter.1 

Though  this  was,  I  believe,  an  honest  attempt  to  protect 
the  skilled  workers,  its  mischief  lay  in  the  power  given  to 
the  justices  of  the  peace  to  determine  wages,  for  in  effect 
it  handed  the  workers  over  to  the  mercy  of  their  employers. 
Thorold  Rogers  condemns  it  severely  on  this  account,  affirm¬ 
ing  that  it  brought  down  wages  to  a  bare  subsistence.  All 
the  same,  the  Act  does  not  appear  to  have  been  unpopular 
among  the  workers,  for  in  the  eighteenth  century,  when 
the  assessment  of  wages  had  fallen  into  disuse,  and  wages 
had  begun  to  be  settled  by  competition,  the  workers  in  the 
skilled  trades  repeatedly  petitioned  Parliament  to  compel 
the  justices  to  carry  out  the  regulations  as  to  apprentices, 
which  they  recognized  would  tend,  by  limiting  the  number 
practising  a  particular  craft,  to  keep  up  the  standard  of  wages. 
“  When  year  after  year,  notwithstanding  all  the  petitions 
of  the  workmen,  the  Acts  regulating  woollen  manufacture 
were  suspended,  a  factory  was  burnt  down  ;  and  in  September, 
1805,  the  London  Fire  Insurance  Companies  received  letters 
of  caution  from  workmen,  wTherein  they  declared  that  as 
Parliament  refused  to  protect  their  rights  they  would  do  it 
themselves.”  It  was  determined  action  of  this  kind  that 
brought  the  whole  question  to  a  head  and  led  to  the  repeal 
of  the  statute  in  the  woollen  trade  in  1806,  and  for  all  trades 
in  1814.  And  this,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  in  petitions 
presented  to  Parliament  300,000  were  for  the  maintenance 
of  the  statute  and  only  2,000  for  its  repeal.2 

1  Brentano  :  History  and  Development  of  Gilds,  p.  103.  3  Ibid.,  p.  128. 


Capitalism  and  the  Guilds 


221 


The  repeal  of  this  statute  declared  the  state  of  industrial 
disorganization  and  disorder  as  the  only  lawful  state.  This 
state  became  only  too  soon  the  prevailing  one  in  all  trades. 
Parliamentary  reports  on  the  condition  of  the  ribbon  trade 
and  the  silk  manufacture  at  Coventry,  Nuneaton,  and 
Macclesfield  describe  as  the  immediate  consequence  of  the 
repeal,  such  a  growth  of  the  system  of  sweaters  and  half¬ 
pay  apprentices,  that  the  journeymen  were  driven  to  famine, 
and  the  female  workers  to  prostitution.  "  Whilst  the 
statute  of  the  5th  Elizabeth  was  in  force/’  says  the  report, 
“  the  distressing  circumstances  now  complained  of  never 
occurred.”  The  whole  of  the  masters  and  weavers  therefore 
petitioned  in  1818  for  the  extension  of  the  Spitalfields  Acts 
to  the  silk  trade  in  the  said  places.  Reports  of  the  year 
1817  and  1818  give  an  absolutely  identical  account  of  the 
condition  of  the  watchmakers  at  Coventry.  Further,  as 
the  justices  of  the  peace  no  longer  assessed  wages  after 
having  heard  masters  and  men,  the  workmen  now  endeavoured 
to  introduce  regulation  of  wages  by  statement-lists  of  prices, 
agreed  upon  by  masters  and  men.  But  they  were  violated 
upon  every  occasion  by  the  employers.  The  words  which 
Pitt  spoke  on  the  subject  of  the  Arbitration  Act  were  now 
completely  fulfilled.  “  The  time  will  come,”  he  said,  "  when 
manufactures  will  have  been  so  long  established,  and  the 
operatives  not  having  any  other  business  to  flee  to,  that  it 
will  be  in  the  power  of  any  one  man  in  a  town  to  reduce  the 
wages,  and  all  the  other  manufacturers  must  follow.  If 
ever  it  does  arrive  at  this  pitch,  Parliament,  if  it  be  not  then 
sitting,  ought  to  be  called  together,  and  if  it  cannot  redress 
your  grievances  its  power  is  at  an  end.  Tell  me  not  that 
Parliament  cannot — it  is  omnipotent  to  protect.”  The 
workmen  were  quite  of  the  opinion  of  Pitt,  and  numberless 
were  the  petitions  which,  after  1814,  they  addressed  to  Parlia¬ 
ment  for  the  legal  regulation  of  their  trades.  But  as  Parlia¬ 
ment  thought  it  could  not  redress  their  grievances,  they 
tried  self-help.  After  the  repeal  of  the  Act  of  Elizabeth, 
combinations  and  unions  therefore  arose  in  all  trades.  But 
whilst,  on  the  one  hand,  the  workmen  were  refused  legal 
protection,  self-help,  in  consequence  of  the  39th  and  40th 
George  III,  c.  106,  was  considered  a  crime.  In  1818, 


222  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


bail  to  the  amount  of  £200  and  two  sureties  for  £100  each 
were  required  for  the  appearance  of  a  common  workman 
at  the  next  session  to  answer  a  charge  of  combining.  The 
greatest  mischief  was,  however,  that  the  Combination 
Laws,  by  confounding  right  and  wrong,  led  men  to  regard 
with  less  aversion  things  really  vicious.  The  people,  in 
their  despair,  did  not  shrink  from  the  greatest  deeds  of  violence 
and  the  most  infamous  crimes  in  self-defence. ” 1 

The  consequence  of  these  acts  of  violence  was  that  in 
1825  the  Combination  Laws  were  repealed.  A  London 
Radical,  Francis  Place,  having  by  dexterously  stage-managing 
the  evidence  given  before  a  Royal  Commission,  succeeded 
in  persuading  the  Government  that  Trade  Unions  owed  their 
existence  entirely  to  the  irritation  caused  by  the  Combina¬ 
tion  Laws  and  that  they  would  disappear  with  their  repeal. 
Workmen  were  not  granted  full  liberty  of  association,  but 
a  half-liberty.  They  were  allowed  to  combine  to  determine 
rates  of  wages  and  hours  of  labour,  but  they  were  not  allowed 
to  limit  the  number  of  apprentices  or  to  prevent  piecework. 
Six  months’  hard  labour  was  to  be  imposed  on  any  one  who 
should  resort  to  violence,  threats,  molestation  or  obstruction 
in  order  to  secure  a  rise  of  wages.  The  judges  interpreted 
this  clause  as  extending  to  workmen  on  strike  who  reproached 
other  workmen  for  continuing  to  labour,  thus  making  picket¬ 
ing  illegal.  They  also  decided  that  Trade  Unions  had  no 
legal  position,  could  not  hold  title  to  property  nor  maintain 
actions  in  the  courts  in  defence  of  their  rights.  These 
grievances,  along  with  a  law  which  discriminated  between 
the  penalties  meted  out  to  employer  and  employee  in  the 
event  of  either  breaking  a  contract,  were  removed  by  the 
Trade  Union  Act  of  1871,  which  gave  the  Unions  legal 
recognition.  But  it  was  not  out  of  any  largeness  of  heart 
of  the  employers,  or  any  political  insight  of  the  governing 
class,  that  such  status  was  given,  but  because  an  outbreak 
of  working-class  violence  in  Sheffield  had  led  them  to  suppose 
that  the  existing  law,  by  denying  legal  status  to  the  Unions, 
tended  rather  to  provoke  than  to  repress  violent  action.  It 
was  thus  at  last  the  principles  of  Roman  Law  were  success¬ 
fully  challenged,  and  the  lie  given  to  the  Roman  theory 
1  Brentano:  History  and  Development  of  Gilds,  pp.  129-131. 


Capitalism  and  the  Guilds 


223 


that  only  by  sapping  every  tie  between  man  and  man  could 
stability  be  given  to  the  State. 

In  these  days  we  recognize  in  the  Trade  Union  Move¬ 
ment  the  first  step  towards  a  restoration  of  the  Guilds. 
Alreadj'  the  Unions,  with  their  elaborate  organizations, 
exercise  many  of  the  functions  which  were  formerly  per¬ 
formed  by  the  Guilds — such  as  the  regulation  of  wages  and 
hours  of  labour,  in  addition  to  the  more  social  duty  of  giving 
timely  help  to  the  sick  and  unfortunate.  Like  the  Guilds, 
the  Unions  have  grown  from  small  beginnings  until  they 
now  control  whole  trades.  Like  the  Guilds  also,  they  are 
not  political  creations,  but  voluntary  organizations  which 
have  arisen  spontaneously  to  protect  the  weaker  members 
of  society  against  the  oppression  of  the  more  powerful. 
They  differ  from  them  as  industrial  organizations  only  to 
the  extent  that,  not  being  in  possession  of  industry  and  of 
corresponding  privileges,  they  are  unable  to  accept  respon¬ 
sibility  for  the  quality  of  work  done,  and  to  regulate  the 
prices.  But  these  differences  are  the  differences  inherent 
in  a  stage  of  transition,  and  will  disappear  as  the  Unions 
trespass  on  the  domains  of  the  capitalist. 


CHAPTER  XV 


POLITICAL  AND  ECONOMIC  THOUGHT  AFTER  THE 

REFORMATION 

By  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century  capitalism  had  triumphed. 
Not  only  had  it  succeeded  in  capturing  agriculture  and 
entirely  undermining  the  position  of  the  Guilds,  but  it  had 
come  to  exercise  a  preponderating  influence  in  the  counsels 
of  the  State.  The  way  for  its  advance  in  England  had  been 
opened  by  Henry  VIII,  who  found  himself  compelled  to 
create  a  new  aristocracy  out  of  the  capitalists  in  order  to 
destroy  the  power  of  the  Church.  It  was  not  long  after 
the  political  arrival  of  this  new  aristocracy  that  there  came 
a  new  valuation  of  political  and  economic  philosophy. 

During  the  Middle  Ages  the  theory  obtained  that  national 
prosperity  and  well-being  had  its  foundation  in  agriculture 
rather  than  commerce.  Work  and  not  wealth  or  property 
was  the  bestower  of  all  worth  and  dignity.  Mediaeval 
economists  deprecated  any  politico-economic  movement 
that  encouraged  the  people  to  give  up  the  pursuit  of  agricul¬ 
ture  for  trade  and  commerce.  Thus  we  read  : — 

“  Among  manual  industries  none  stood  higher  in  the 
estimation  of  the  Canon  Law  than  agriculture.  It  was 
looked  upon  as  the  mother  and  producer  of  all  social  organ¬ 
ization  and  all  culture,  as  the  fosterer  of  all  other  industries, 
and  consequently  as  the  basis  of  national  well-being.  The 
Canon  Law  exacted  special  consideration  for  agriculture, 
and  partly  for  this  reason,  that  it  tended  in  a  higher  degree 
than  any  other  branch  of  labour  to  teach  those  who  practised 
it  godly  fear  and  uprightness.  ‘  The  farmer/  so  it  is  written 
in  A  Christian  Admonition,  ‘  must  in  all  things  be  protected 
and  encouraged,  for  all  depends  on  his  labour,  from  the 
Emperor  to  the  humblest  of  mankind,  and  his  handiwork 

224 


Political  and  Economic  Thought 


225 


is  in  particular  honourable  and  well-pleasing  to  God/  There¬ 
fore  both  the  spiritual  and  the  secular  law  protect  him/' 

“  Next  to  agriculture  came  handiwork.  ‘  This  is  praise¬ 
worthy  in  the  sight  of  God,  especially  in  so  far  as  it  represents 
necessary  and  useful  things/  And  when  the  articles  are 
made  with  care  and  art,  then  both  God  and  men  take  plea¬ 
sure  in  them  ;  and  it  is  good  and  true  work  when  artistic 
men,  by  the  skill  and  cunning  of  their  hands,  in  beautiful 
building  and  sculpture,  spread  the  glory  of  God  and  make 
men  gentle  in  their  spirits,  so  that  they  find  delight  in  beauti¬ 
ful  things,  and  look  reverently  on  all  art  and  handicraft 
as  a  gift  of  God  for  use,  enjoyment,  and  edification  of  man¬ 
kind/' 

"  Trade  and  commerce  were  held  in  lower  esteem.  ‘  An 
honourable  merchant/  says  Trithemius,  ‘  who  does  not 
only  think  of  large  profits,  and  who  is  guided  in  all  his  dealings 
by  the  laws  of  God  and  man,  and  who  gladly  gives  to  the 
needy  of  his  wealth  and  earnings,  deserves  the  same  esteem 
as  any  other  worker.  But  it  is  no  easy  matter  to  be  always 
honourable  in  mercantile  dealings,  and  with  the  increase 
of  gain  not  to  become  avaricious.  Without  commerce  no 
community,  of  course,  can  exist,  but  immoderate  commerce 
is  rather  hurtful  than  beneficial,  because  it  fosters  greed  of 
gain  and  gold,  and  enervates  and  emasculates  the  nation 
through  love  of  pleasure  and  luxury/  ” 

“  The  Canonical  writers  did  not  think  it  was  conducive 
to  the  well-being  of  the  people  that  the  merchants  ‘  like 
spiders  should  everywhere  collect  together  and  draw  every¬ 
thing  into  their  webs/  With  the  ever-increasing  growth 
and  predominance  of  the  mercantile  spirit  before  their  eyes, 
they  were  sufficiently  justified  in  their  condemnation  of  the 
tyranny  and  iniquity  of  trade  which,  as  St.  Thomas  Aquinas 
had  already  said,  made  all  civic  life  corrupt,  and  by  the 
casting  aside  of  good  faith  and  honesty  opened  the  door 
wide  to  fraudulence  ;  while  each  one  thought  only  of  his 
personal  profit  without  regard  to  the  public  good.”  1 

This  attitude  towards  social  questions  came  to  an  end  at 
the  Reformation,  when,  with  the  destruction  of  the  Church, 

1  History  of  the  German  People  at  the  Close  of  the  Middle  Ages,  by  Johannes 
Janssen,  vol.  ii.  pp.  97-8. 


15 


226  A  GuildsmarCs  Interpretatio?i  of  History 


power  passed  entirely  into  the  hands  of  the  capitalists  who 
came  to  dominate  the  State.  The  political  philosophy 
which  gradually  came  into  existence  under  their  auspices 
looks  at  things  from  a  very  different  angle.  It  makes  no 
attempt  to  interpret  society  in  the  light  of  the  principle  of 
function,  to  conceive  of  society  as  a  whole  the  parts  of  which 
are  organically  related  to  each  other.  There  is  little  or  no 
attempt  on  the  part  of  Government  to  protect  the  interest 
of  the  labourer  ;  to  take  measures  to  see  that  the  fruits  of 
his  labour  are  secured  for  him.  On  the  contrary,  regard  is 
paid  only  to  the  interests  of  the  merchant,  while  the  labourer 
is  left  to  shift  for  himself  as  best  he  can,  with  only  such  doubt¬ 
ful  protection  as  the  Statute  of  Apprentices  gave  to  the 
town  workers.  Though  the  claims  of  agriculture  were  not 
altogether  neglected,  yet  the  tendency  in  the  long  run  was 
for  statesmen  and  theorists  to  exalt  manufacturers  above 
agriculture  and  exchange  above  production.  This  came 
about  because  it  was  through  foreign  trade  that  the  mone}' 
was  made  which  was  the  main  source  of  revenue  to  the 
State  and  because  there  was  a  general  tendency  in  the  thought 
of  the  governing  and  merchant  classes  to  identify  money 
with  wealth.  The  governing  class  of  capitalists  with  their 
henchmen  the  lawyers  consisted  no  longer  of  men  capable 
of  taking  large  and  comprehensive  views  of  society,  but  of 
men  whose  minds  were  entirely  preoccupied  with  its  material 
aspects.  They  concentrated  all  their  attention  upon  finding 
ways  and  means  to  increase  the  wealth  of  the  nation  but  for 
reasons  perhaps  best  known  to  themselves  they  chose  to 
ignore  the  problem  as  to  how  it  was  to  be  distributed. 

External  circumstances  favoured  the  growth  of  this 
point  of  view  in  the  governing  class.  The  suppression  of 
the  monasteries  had  been  followed  by  a  period  of  great 
economic  depression,  when  the  people  felt  the  pressure  of 
poverty.  There  was  great  dislocation  of  industry  everywhere 
and  a  debased  coinage  had  not  improved  matters.  The 
low- water  mark  was  reached  during  the  reign  of  Edward  VI. 
Under  Elizabeth  things  were  lifted  out  of  the  mire  and  the 
country  rescued  from  economic  stagnation  and  depression 
by  the  encouragement  given  to  manufacturers  and  foreign 
trade.  The  popularity  of  Elizabeth — for  in  spite  of  her 


Political  and  Economic  Thought 


227 


religious  persecutions  she  was  popular — was  due  to  the 
fact  that  the  support  she  gave  to  the  policy  of  William 
Cecil,  Lord  Burghley,  had  the  effect  towards  the  close  of  her 
reign  of  restoring  the  national  prosperity.  Immediately 
the  policy  of  Burghley  was  prompted  by  the  likelihood  of 
a  war  with  Spain.  England  had  become  Protestant,  and 
as  she  had  hitherto  been  dependent  for  war  material  both 
as  regards  gunpowder  and  the  metals  necessary  for  the 
making  of  ordnance  upon  supplies  that  came  from  ports 
controlled  by  the  Roman  Catholic  Powers,  it  was  urgent  if 
she  was  to  retain  her  independence  for  her  to  have  a  supply 
of  her  own.  Every  means  therefore  was  taken  to  foster  the 
manufacture  of  munitions  of  war  at  home,  and  to  such  an 
extent  was  the  effort  successful  that  when  at  last  the  storm 
burst  and  the  Spanish  Armada  sailed  for  England,  it  was 
found  that  the  leeway  had  been  entirely  made  up  and  that 
English  guns  were  as  good  if  not  better  than  those  of  Spain. 

But  the  new  policy  did  not  end  here.  Agriculture  was 
encouraged  for  military  as  well  as  for  economic  reasons. 
Measures  were  taken  to  make  tillage  as  profitable  as  pasturage 
by  removing  the  embargo  upon  the  export  of  grain,  while 
enclosures  were  stopped.  The  fishing  trades  were  supported 
not  merely  for  the  wealth  they  produced  but  as  a  school 
of  seamanship  to  train  men  for  the  mercantile  and  naval 
marine.  These  things  did  much  to  mitigate  the  evil  of 
unemployment  which  had  become  so  chronic  under  previous 
reigns,  but  further  measures  were  taken  to  deal  with  it 
definitely  and  to  diffuse  a  general  prosperity  by  the  establish¬ 
ment  of  a  great  number  of  new  industries  that  made  goods 
in  England  which  hitherto  had  only  been  obtainable  from 
abroad.  Industries  for  the  manufacture  of  hardware, 
sailcloth,  glass-paper,  starch,  soap  and  other  commodities 
of  common  consumption  were  successfully  established. 
Mines  also  were  opened.  The  assistance  of  German  engineers 
was  called  in  for  this.  A  new  method  of  pumping  which 
they  had  invented  made  mining  a  more  practicable  and 
commercial  proposition. 

The  circumstances  of  the  age  were  particularly  favourable 
to  these  new  developments.  The  religious  wars  in  the 
Netherlands  and  elsewhere  led  to  the  emigration  of  great 


228  A  Guildsmari s  Interpretation  of  History 


numbers  of  skilled  workmen,  who  found  a  haven  of  refuge 
in  England  and  brought  a  technical  knowledge  of  new 
industries  with  them.  Moreover,  there  was  the  change  of 
trade  routes  so  favourable  to  English  industry.  During  the 
Middle  Ages  these  routes  had  been  overland,  and  it  was  this 
circumstance  that  brought  such  prosperity  to  the  Hanseatic 
towns  of  Germany  whose  central  European  position  was 
then  so  enviable.  But  with  the  invention  of  the  mariner's 
compass,  the  discovery  of  America  and  the  sea  route  to 
India,  overland  trade  routes  gave  place  to  sea  routes,  and 
this  took  prosperity  away  from  the  Hanseatic  and  other 
inland  towns  and  countries  and  transferred  it  to  seaports 
and  countries  with  a  good  seaboard.  This  transformation, 
which  occupied  the  space  of  about  fifty  years,  was  very 
profitable  to  English  merchants  and  manufacturers,  who 
now  began  to  secure  a  larger  share  of  the  commerce  of 
the  world,  and  helped  enormously  to  restore  the  national 
prosperity. 

It  would  have  been  a  fortunate  thing  for  England  if  the 
political  speculation  which  accompanied  these  changes  had 
kept  its  mental  balance  and  reconciled  in  their  true  propor¬ 
tions  the  old  with  the  new.  But  unfortunately  such  was 
not  the  case.  Prosperity  had  been  restored  not  by  efforts 
to  re-establish  justice  in  the  internal  ordering  of  society 
but  by  seizing  the  opportunities  which  a  period  of  economic 
transition  afforded  for  the  making  of  money.  And  so  faith 
in  the  old  order  tended  to  decline  while  confidence  in  the 
new  increased.  Capitalism  had  been  able  to  restore  prosperity, 
and  so  the  opinions  of  capitalists  came  to  weigh  more  and 
more  in  the  counsels  of  the  State.  Success  in  the  new  order 
depended  upon  adaptability,  and  so  the  opinion  grew  that  a 
country  lived  not  by  its  wisdom  or  its  justice  but  by  its 
wits.  The  State,  which  during  the  Middle  Ages  had  concerned 
itself  exclusively  with  the  functions  of  military  protection 
and  the  administration  of  the  law,  and  since  the  reign  of 
Henry  VIII  had  made  itself  responsible  for  the  religious 
life  of  the  people,  now  began  to  concern  itself  with  the  pro¬ 
motion  of  industry  and  commerce.  According  to  the  new 
dispensation,  wealth,  or  to  be  more  strictly  correct,  bullion, 
was  the  great  alchemy.  Success  in  the  race  for  wealth  was 


Political  and  Economic  Thought 


229 


the  precursor  of  all  other  desirable  things.  Hence  it  was  the 
first  concern  of  the  State  to  see  to  it  that  there  was  always 
a  large  store  of  the  precious  metal  on  hand.  To  achieve 
this  end,  considered  of  such  vital  importance,  every  expedient 
was  considered  legitimate.  The  Government  might  prohibit 
the  import  or  export  of  certain  commodities.  This  industry 
was  to  be  encouraged  to  export  by  subsidizing  it  with  bounties, 
that  was  to  be  discouraged  by  the  imposition  of  duties. 
Charters  were  granted  giving  private  monopolies  to  certain 
companies.  The  test  of  success  was  to  show  a  balance  of 
trade  in  favour  of  the  nation  and  an  increase  in  the  gold 
reserve.  This  system  of  the  control  of  production  and 
exchange  by  the  State  is  known  as  Mercantilism.  It  is, 
as  its  name  implies  the  interpretation,  of  national  policy 
in  the  terms  of  the  counting-house.  Its  defect  was  that  it 
placed  the  State  at  the  mercy  of  vested  interests  and  was  a 
source  of  political  corruption,  while  it  became  a  fruitful  source 
of  wars.  In  the  Middle  Ages  wars  had  been  territorial  and 
dynastic.  Now  they  became  economic  and  were  fought 
over  tariffs,  concessions  and  privileges.  It  was  the  inevitable 
consequence  of  the  defeat  of  the  Guilds,  which,  changing  the 
ideal  of  industry  from  a  qualitative  to  a  quantitative  one, 
necessarily  brought  those  who  pursued  it  in  collision  with 
economic  interests  beyond  the  seas.  The  wars  with  the 
Dutch  were  deliberately  provoked  by  the  Navigation  Act, 
which  prohibited  the  importation  in  foreign  vessels  of  any 
but  the  products  of  the  countries  to  which  they  belonged. 
It  was  intended  to  strike  a  fatal  blow  at  the  carrying  trade 
of  the  Dutch  from  which  they  drew  their  wealth  and  to  secure 
our  supremacy  on  the  seas  ;  and  it  was  successful.  The 
Mercantilists  clearly  grasped  the  fundamental  economic 
fact,  that  under  competitive  conditions  of  industry  the 
commercial  advantage  of  one  country  is  often  only  to  be 
obtained  at  the  expense  of  another,  and  that  "  Trade  follows 
the  flag,”  as  Conservatives  believe  to  this  day.  Mercantilism 
is  not  dead,  it  is  the  living  faith  of  the  commercial  classes 
to-day  in  all  countries  of  the  world.  Free  Traders  in  these 
days  are  unwilling  to  face  the  unpleasant  fact  that  the  terms 
of  the  economic  struggle  are  laid  down  by  law  and  maintained 
by  force,  though  Adam  Smith  did  say,  “  As  defence  is  of 


230  A  Guildsman  s  Interpretation  of  History 


much  more  importance  than  opulence,  the  Act  of  Navigation 
is,  perhaps,  the  wisest  of  all  the  regulations  of  England.” 
People  who  believe  in  commercialism  ought  to  believe  in 
militarism.  If  one  of  these  is  to  be  deprecated,  then  the 
other  is.  To  believe  in  commercialism  and  regret  militarism 
is  to  live  in  a  world  of  unrealities,  as  Free  Traders  in  these 
days  are  finding  out. 

Mercantilism  was  not  a  social  theory  but  a  commercial 
policy  evolved  by  men  who  were  satisfied  to  assume  that  a 
policy  which  suited  their  own  immediate  interests  must  be 
good  for  society.  It  began  its  career  during  the  reign  of 
James  I,  when  Gerard  Malynes,  a  specialist  in  currency, 
whose  advice  on  mercantile  affairs  was  often  sought  by  the 
Privy  Council,  set  forth  his  views  in  a  series  of  pamphlets 
in  which  he  urged  the  Government  to  forbid  the  export  of 
bullion.  The  idea  was  a  Mediaeval  one,  and  is  altogether 
unintelligible  apart  from  the  Mediaeval  system  of  thought, 
which,  refusing  to  divorce  economies  from  moral  considera¬ 
tions,  placed  the  maintenance  of  the  social  order  before  the 
interests  of  capital  and  trade.  Viewing  the  social  and  economic 
evils  which  accompanied  the  growth  of  foreign  trade,  it  was 
but  natural  that  the  Medievalists,  like  Aristotle,  should  regard 
its  increase  with  alarm  and  suspicion  and  seek  to  put  obstruc¬ 
tions  in  the  path  of  its  advance,  and  that  the  support  of  the 
State  should  be  secured  for  obstructionist  tactics  by  the 
convenient  theory  that  armies  and  fleets  could  only  be  main¬ 
tained  in  distant  countries  if  there  is  money  to  pay  for  them, 
and  that  such  money  would  not  be  forthcoming  when  wanted 
if  bullion  were  exported  from  the  country.  But  Malynes, 
writing  at  a  later  date,  urged  his  case  upon  other  grounds — 
that  as  exchange  implied  value  for  value,  the  operation  of 
the  exchanges  defrauded  the  revenue. 

Taking  his  stand  upon  such  purely  technical  grounds,  the 
first  Mercantilists  found  no  difficulty  in  refuting  him.  If 
the  increase  of  foreign  trade  was  a  good  and  desirable  thing 
quite  apart  from  how  the  increased  wealth  was  distributed — 
and  in  official  quarters  this  assumption  was  taken  for  granted 
* — then  the  Mercantilists  were  easily  able  to  show  that 
restrictions  on  the  export  of  bullion  impeded  the  growth  of 
foreign  trade.  **  They  represented,  first,  that  the  exporta- 


Political  and  Economic  Thought 


231 


tion  of  gold  and  silver,  in  order  to  purchase  foreign  goods, 
did  not  always  diminish  the  quantity  of  those  metals  in  the 
kingdom.  That,  on  the  contrary,  it  might  frequently  increase 
that  quantity  ;  because  if  the  consumption  of  foreign  goods 
was  not  thereby  increased  in  the  country,  those  goods  might 
be  re-exported  to  foreign  countries,  and,  being  there  sold 
for  a  large  profit,  might  bring  back  much  more  treasure  than 
was  originally  sent  out  to  purchase  them."  1  Thomas  Mun, 
who  is  sometimes  described  as  the  founder  of  Mercantilism 
and  whose  treatise  England's  Treasure  in  Foreign  Trade 
which,  often  reprinted  during  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 
centuries,  retained  almost  canonical  authority  until  it  was 
displaced  by  The  Wealth  of  Nations ,  declared  that  "  Money 
begets  trade  and  trade  increases  money.' '  He  compared 
the  operations  of  foreign  trade  to  the  seed-time  and  harvest  of 
agriculture.  "  If  we  only  behold,"  he  says,  "  the  actions  of 
the  husbandman  in  the  seed-time,  when  he  casteth  away 
much  good  corn  unto  the  ground,  we  shall  account  him 
rather  a  madman  than  a  husbandman.  But  when  we  consider 
his  labours  in  the  harvest,  which  is  the  end  of  his  endeavours, 
we  shall  find  the  worth  and  plentiful  increase  of  his  actions." 

The  sub-title  of  the  treatise  declares  that  "  the  balance 
of  our  foreign  trade  is  the  rule  of  Treasury,"  and  the  object 
is  declared  to  be  to  exhibit  the  means  by  which  a  kingdom 
may  be  enriched.  "  The  ordinary  means  to  increase  our 
wealth  and  treasure  is  by  foreign  trade,  wherein  we  must 
ever  observe  this  rule — to  sell  more  to  strangers  yearly  than 
we  consume  of  theirs  in  value.  For  that  part  of  our  stock 
which  is  not  returned  to  us  in  wares  must  necessarily  be 
brought  home  in  treasure."  Every  effort  must  therefore  be 
devoted  to  increase  our  exports  and  to  decrease  our  consump¬ 
tion  of  foreign  commodities.  Waste  land  should  be  used  to 
grow  hemp,  flax  and  other  articles  which  are  now  imported. 
We  might  also  diminish  our  imports  if  we  would  lessen  our 
demand  for  foreign  wares  in  diet  and  raiment.  The  vagaries 
and  excesses  of  fashion  might  be  corrected  by  adopting 
sumptuary  laws  prevailing  in  other  countries.  "If  in  our 
raiment  we  will  be  prodigal,  let  this  be  done  by  our  own 
manufactures,  where  the  success  of  the  rich  may  be  the 

1  Wealth  of  Nations,  by  Adam  Smith,  book  iv.  chap.  i. 


232  A  GuildsmarCs  Interpretation  of  History 


employment  of  the  poor,  whose  labours,  notwithstanding, 
would  be  more  profitable  if  they  were  done  to  the  use  of 
strangers/'  We  may  charge  a  high  price  for  articles  which 
our  neighbours  need  and  which  no  other  country  can  supply  ; 
but  those  of  which  we  do  not  possess  the  monopoly  must  be 
sold  as  cheap  as  possible.  Foreign  materials  worked  up  in 
England  for  export  should  be  duty  free.  Our  exports 
should  be  carried  in  our  own  ships,  and  our  fisheries  should 
be  developed.  Writing  as  a  Director  of  the  East  India 
Company,  Mun  pronounced  our  trade  with  the  East  Indies 
the  most  profitable  of  our  commercial  activities,  not  only 
because  we  obtain  its  products  cheaply  for  ourselves,  but 
because  we  sell  the  surplus  at  a  high  price  to  our  neighbours. 
This  “  may  well  stir  up  our  utmost  endeavours  to  maintain 
and  enlarge  this  great  and  noble  business,  so  much  importing 
the  public  wealth,  strength  and  happiness."  1 

Such  was  the  faith  of  Mercantilism  as  it  was  most  widely 
accepted.  Apart  from  what  he  has  to  say  about  sumptuary 
laws,  which  has  a  fifteenth-century  ring  about  it,  it  is  the 
same  faith  as  that  of  the  average  commercial  man  to-day. 
Subsequent  writers  sought  to  widen  out  the  Mercantile 
theory.  They  deprecated  the  exaggerated  importance  given 
to  foreign  trade  and  emphasized  the  importance  of  home 
markets  and  agriculture.  Rejecting  the  notion  that  the 
national  wealth  depended  on  cash,  they  maintained  that 
goods  paid  for  goods  and  that  nature  and  labour  were  the 
ultimate  source  of  wealth.  To  this  extent  their  thought 
showed  a  reversion  towards  the  Mediaeval  point  of  view. 
But  on  the  other  hand  they  were  modernist,  being  the  fore¬ 
runners  of  the  Free  Traders.  They  attacked  the  elaborate 
system  of  prohibitions,  duties,  bounties  and  monopolies 
as  an  impediment  rather  than  an  encouragement  to  trade. 
Dudley  North  anticipated  Adam  Smith  when  he  declared, 
“  The  world  as  to  trade  is  but  as  one  nation,  and  nations 
are  but  as  persons.  No  trade  is  unprofitable  to  the  public  ; 
for  if  any  prove  so,  men  leave  it  off ;  and  wherever  the  trader 
thrives  the  public  thrives  also."  Charles  Davanent,  another 
of  the  school,  maintained  that  loss  by  balance  in  one  trade 
may  cause  profit  in  another.  “  Trade,"  he  says,  “  is  in  its 

1  Political  Thought  from  Bacon  to  Halifax,  by  G.  P.  Gooch,  pp.  232-4. 


Political  and  Economic  Thought 


233 


own  nature  free,  finds  its  own  channel,  and  best  directeth 
its  own  course.”  But  he  forgets  that  the  same  arguments 
may  be  turned  against  him.  For  while  it  is  true  that  trade 
when  untrammelled  will  find  its  own  channel,  it  does  not 
follow  that  the  channel  it  finds  is  a  socially  desirable  one ; 
for  while  loss  in  one  trade  may  cause  profit  in  another,  one 
man  is  called  to  bear  the  loss  while  another  gets  the  profits, 
resulting  in  an  unequal  distribution  of  wealth  that  is  any¬ 
thing  but  socially  advantageous. 

The  next  development  of  Mercantilism  is  associated  with 
the  name  of  Adam  Smith.  I  call  it  the  next  development 
because  though  it  is  true  the  Manchester  School  reversed 
the  economic  maxims  of  the  Mercantilists,  yet  finally  they 
only  differed  from  them  to  the  extent  of  carrying  their  ideas 
to  their  logical  conclusion.  The  Mercantile  theory  of  Mun 
was  a  theory  of  the  business  of  making  money  by  foreign 
trade.  As  such  it  provided  a  theory  or  policy  for  a  group 
of  interests  which  it  assumed  was  in  the  public  interest,  but 
it  took  no  particular  pains  to  explain  how  and  why.  The 
Free  Traders  who  followed  him  attempted  to  give  the  theory 
a  wider  application,  demanding  the  abolition  of  privileges 
in  trade.  But  they  went  little  further  than  making  this 
demand.  To  secure  acceptance  for  such  proposals  something 
more  was  needed.  Free  Trade  would  remain  unacceptable 
as  an  administrative  proposal  so  long  as  political  and  economic 
thought  was  dominated  largely  by  Mediaeval  preconceptions, 
and  it  became  necessary,  therefore,  to  secure  acceptation  for 
the  Free  Trade  policy  to  undermine  what  remained  of  Medi¬ 
aeval  political  and  economic  thought.  This  was  the  work 
of  Adam  Smith.  To  the  Mediaeval  idea  of  privileges  for  all 
he  opposed  the  idea  of  the  abolition  of  all  privileges  and 
unfettered  individual  competition  which  he  associated  with 
the  gospel  of  Free  Trade.  To  the  Mediaeval  idea  of  the 
Just  Price  he  opposed  the  idea  that  prices  were  best  settled 
by  competition.  “  To  buy  in  the  cheapest  market  and  to 
sell  in  the  dearest  ”  was  a  policy  calculated  to  secure  the 
greatest  good  of  the  greatest  number.  But  such  economic 
principles  were  incompatible  with  the  Mediaeval  and  Chris¬ 
tian  ideal  of  human  unselfishness.  Then,  concluded  Adam 
Smith,  such  principles  Imd  no  relevance  in  economics.  Not 


234  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


unselfishness  but  enlightened  self-interest  was  the  ideal  to 
be  aimed  at. 

In  his  Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments  Adam  Smith  postu¬ 
lates  the  doctrine  of  sympathy  as  the  real  bond  between 
human  beings  in  their  ethical  relations.  But  in  the  Wealth 
of  Nations  he  makes  it  clear  that  human  sympathy  has  no 
place  in  economic  relationships.  "  It  is  not  from  the  benevo¬ 
lence  of  the  butcher,  the  brewer,  or  the  baker,”  he  tells  us, 
“  that  we  expect  our  dinner,  but  from  their  regard  to  their 
own  self-interest.  We  address  ourselves,  not  to  their  humanity, 
but  to  their  self-love,  and  never  talk  to  them  of  our  necessities, 
but  of  their  advantage.”  This  perverted  attitude  of  mind 
permeates  the  whole  of  Adam  Smith’s  writings.  According 
to  him  the  public  well-being  was  secured,  not  by  the  assertion 
of  communal  interests,  by  the  subordination  of  individual 
interests  to  those  of  the  community,  but  by  the  deliberate 
removal  of  all  economic  restraints  in  order  that  each  individual 
might  be  at  liberty  to  pursue  his  own  selfish  ends  without 
let  or  hindrance.  Laissez-faire,  laissez  passer  was  the  key 
to  unlock  all  economic  problems,  the  sole  panacea  for  all 
human  ills,  the  only  hope  of  social  regeneration.  Give  free 
play  to  enlightened  self-interest  and  natural  liberty,  and 
prosperity  would  soon  shine  in  all  its  splendour  on  every 
department  of  the  national  life,  for  the  effect  of  urging  each 
individual  to  pursue  his  interests  under  a  system  of  unfettered 
individual  competition  would  be  to  so  stimulate  trade  and 
cheapen  production  that  there  would  soon  be  plenty  for  all 
and  to  spare. 

That  Adam  Smith  should  have  been  hailed  as  a  prophet 
can  only  be  explained  on  the  hypothesis  that  the  moral  tone 
of  society  had  already  reached  its  nadir  ere  he  wrote.  Ruskin’s 
allusion  to  him  as  “  the  half-bred  and  half-witted  Scotchman 
who  taught  the  deliberate  blasphemy  :  Thou  shalt  hate 
the  Lord  thy  God,  damn  His  laws  and  covet  thy  neighbour’s 
goods,”  was  well  deserved,  and  is  not  the  less  true  because 
he  was  sufficiently  cunning  to  wrap  up  his  devilish  advice 
in  language  of  plausible  sophistry  instead  of  presenting  it 
in  the  raw.  The  apology  of  all  who  act  as  Adam  Smith 
would  have  them  do  is  that  they  take  the  world  as  they 
find  it,  but  they  conceal  the  fact  that  they  are  content  to 


Political  and  Economic  Thought 


235 


leave  it  worse  than  they  found  it.  Of  no  one  is  this  truer  than 
of  Adam  Smith.  He  was  the  pioneer  of  that  economic  fatalism 
which  during  its  fifty  years  of  power  paralysed  society.  In 
the  hands  of  his  followers  all  his  half-hearted  qualifications 
were  torn  away  and  political  economy  became  the  rigid 
soulless  doctrine  of  every  man  for  himself  and  the  devil 
take  the  hindermost,  and  all  sympathy  for  the  exploited  was 
strangled  by  the  Ricardian  "  iron  law  of  wages/'  That 
Ruskin  entirely  annihilated  the  brazen  doctrine  in  the  first 
three  pages  of  Unto  this  Last,  published  in  1862,  by  ex¬ 
posing  the  fallacy  underlying  the  method  of  reasoning  of 
the  Manchester  economists,  any  one  with  an  ounce  of  logic 
in  his  composition  is  well  aware.  Yet  in  spite  of  this  it  showed 
no  signs  of  weakening  until  its  most  distinguished  adherent, 
John  Stuart  Mill,  disowned  the  superstition  seven  years 
afterwards,  in  1869. 

Apologists  of  Adam  Smith  urge  in  his  defence  that  the 
governing  class  took  only  so  much  from  his  teaching  as  suited 
them  and  ignored  the  rest,  and  he  is  therefore  not  to  be  blamed 
for  the  misinterpretation  or  misapplication  of  his  principles. 
While  this  plea  may  be  urged  in  defence  of  other  men,  it 
cannot  be  urged  in  the  case  of  Adam  Smith.  Most  pioneers 
of  thought  have  to  complain  that  their  followers  have  been 
true  to  the  letter  of  their  advice  while  their  spirit  has  been 
neglected,  but  the  governing  class  were  true  to  the  spirit 
of  Adam  Smith's  gospel  if  not  to  the  letter.  If  Adam 
Smith  really  thought  that  he  could  on  the  one  hand  urge 
individuals  to  pursue  their  own  selfish  interests  and  at  the 
same  time  forgo  in  the  public  interest  any  privileges  they 
might  possess,  he  is  to  be  regarded  as  a  fool  of  the  first  order, 
half-witted  as  Ruskin  called  him,  entirely  destitute  of  any 
understanding  of  the  human  psychology,  for  the  heartless 
competition  to  which  he  condemned  those  without  privileges 
made  those  who  possessed  privileges  cling  to  them  more 
tenaciously  than  ever. 

But  the  evil  of  Adam  Smith's  gospel  does  not  end  with 
the  fact  that  it  confirmed  the  governing  class  in  the  pursuit 
of  their  own  selfish  interests  ;  it  operated  to  force  the  work¬ 
ing  class  to  pursue  the  same  policy  in  self-defence.  Hence 
the  theory  of  Adam  Smith  leads  logically  to  that  of  Marx. 


286  A  Guildsmaris  Interpretation  of  History 

The  doctrine  of  individualism  leads  inevitably  to  that  of 
the  Class  War,  which  is  the  natural  and  inevitable  rebellion 
of  the  masses  against  a  governing  class  that  has  become,  in 
the  words  of  Sir  Thomas  More,  “  a  certain  conspiracy  of 
rich  men  procuring  their  own  commodities  under  the  name 
and  title  of  the  Common  Wealth.’ * 


CHAPTER  XVI 


THE  INDUSTRIAL  REVOLUTION 

In  the  latter  half  of  the  eighteenth  century  there  was 
inaugurated  a  series  of  changes  in  methods  of  production 
which  gradually  changed  England  from  being  a  country 
mainly  rural  and  agricultural  into  one  largely  urban  and 
industrial.  The  period  of  transition  is  known  as  the 
Industrial  Revolution,  and  is  roughly  dated  from  about 
1770  to  1840,  though  of  course  these  dates  are  entirely 
arbitrary  inasmuch  as  industry  had  been  moving  in  this 
direction  for  at  least  the  two  preceding  centuries,  while 
the  development  and  expansion  of  the  forces  then  set  in 
motion  have  continued  ever  since.  But  it  was  during 
those  years  that  the  really  dramatic  changes  were  made. 
In  1769  Watts  made  the  steam  engine  of  Newcomen  into 
a  really  practical  and  commercial  thing  by  the  introduction 
of  a  separate  condenser,  and  this  invention  was  the  central 
agency  for  transforming  industry  from  a  basis  of  handicraft 
to  machine  production.  Meanwhile  the  textile  industry 
was  becoming  rapidly  mechanized.  In  1730  Kay  invented 
the  flying  shuttle  ;  in  1770  Hargreaves  the  spinning  jenny. 
Arkwright,  Compton  and  Cartwright  followed  with  their  in¬ 
ventions  which  made  possible  the  application  of  steam  power 
to  textile  production.  The  ball  was  now  fairly  set  rolling  ; 
inventions  in  one  trade  promoted  inventions  in  another. 
The  inventions  of  the  cotton  industry  were  adapted  to 
the  woollen  and  linen  trades,  to  hosiery,  silk  and  lace¬ 
making.  First  one  trade  and  then  another  succumbed  to 
the  new  inventions  until  in  our  day  this  tendency  has 
reached  its  climax  in  the  growth  of  automatic  machinery 
to  which  the  war  gave  such  an  impetus. 

For  some  time  before  the  Industrial  Revolution  burst 

237 


238  A  Guildsmari’s  Inter pretation  of  History 


upon  the  world  industry  had  been  becoming  more  mechanical. 
The  introduction  into  the  workshops  of  the  system  of  the 
division  of  labour  in  the  seventeenth  century  by  splitting 
up  the  handicrafts  into  simple  detailed  operations  paved 
the  way  for  change.  For  as  machinery  in  its  infancy  was 
only  capable  of  performing  separate  and  simplified  opera¬ 
tions,  it  is  evident  that  so  long  as  all  the  operations  necessary 
to  production  in  any  of  the  handicrafts  were  the  work  of 
a  skilled  handicraftsman  machinery  could  make  very  little 
headway.  But  when  the  individual  labourer  was  confined 
in  his  operations  to  a  single  simple  mechanical  task,  the 
road  was  paved  for  the  introduction  of  machinery  by 
simplifying  the  problem  of  the  inventor. 

This  change  from  a  qualitative  to  a  quantitative  basis 
for  industry  was  not  introduced  without  a  considerable 
amount  of  opposition,  which  came  both  from  above  and 
from  below.  The  craftsmen  hated  it,  and  it  is  safe  to  say 
the  change  would  never  have  been  made  but  for  the  defeat 
of  the  Guilds,  since  so  long  as  the  workers  retained  any 
control  over  the  conditions  of  their  employment  they  would 
resist  changes  in  production  which  destroyed  pleasure  in 
work  and  involved  their  personal  degradation.  The  instinct 
of  the  craftsman  is  always  against  factory  production. 
There  is  no  Mediceval  prejudice  about  this,  for  in  this  respect 
craftsmen  have  not  changed  since  the  Middle  Ages.  The 
hand-loom  weavers  refused  to  go  into  the  factories  in 
Lancashire,  though  the  wages  were  higher,  because  they 
hated  the  discipline  of  the  factories  and  felt  it  a  moral  sur¬ 
render  to  accept  voluntarily  such  conditions  of  servitude. 
“  Although  to  the  authors  of  the  books  on  the  advantages 
of  machinery,  invention  seemed  to  have  lightened  the 
drudgery  of  men  and  women,  it  had  introduced  a  wearing 
tension  ;  the  nervous  strain  of  watching  machinery  and 
working  with  machinery  aged  men  and  women  faster  than 
the  heaviest  physical  exertions.”  1  Every  craftsman  instinc¬ 
tively  knows  this,  and  it  is  this  that  lies  at  the  bottom  of 
their  hatred  of  machinery.  The  class  to-day,  as  at  the 
time  of  the  Industrial  Revolution,  which  is  most  certain 

1  The  Town  Labourer,  1760-1832,  by  J.  L.  Hammond  and  Barbara 
Hammond,  p.  21. 


The  Industrial  Revolution 


239 


of  the  benefits  of  machinery  is  the  class  the  farthest  removed 
from  it,  who  profit  by  the  conveniences  it  brings  them  and 
who  are  not  called  upon  to  support  its  burden.  As  the 
class  which  was  required  to  attend  machinery  viewed  the 
matter  otherwise,  it  is  apparent  that  its  introduction  pre¬ 
supposes  the  existence  of  a  slave  class  in  society  that  can 
be  exploited.  Indeed,  it  was  from  such  a  class  that  the 
first  factory  operatives  came.  “  There  were  three  main 
disturbances  of  the  regular  life  of  the  time  to  account  for 
the  great  stream  of  population  into  Lancashire  and  the 
adjacent  counties.  There  was,  first,  the  agrarian  revolution 
in  England,  dispossessing  a  large  number  of  small  agricul¬ 
turists  and  breaking  down  the  life  and  economy  of  the 
old  village.  There  was,  secondly,  the  congestion  of  Ireland 
and  the  acute  distress  caused  by  the  exactions  of  an  absentee 
landlord-class.  There  was,  in  the  third  place,  the  long  war  ; 
the  disbanding  of  a  huge  army  let  loose  a  flood  of  men 
whose  ties  with  their  own  homes  were  broken.  The  building 
of  canals  and  bridges  helped  to  make  labour  more  mobile, 
and  these  enterprises  drew  people  to  the  districts  where 
labour  was  wanted  for  the  factories.’ ’  1 

Until  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  the  efforts 
of  the  workers  to  resist  mechanical  innovations  found 

support  in  high  quarters.  It  is  well  known  that  the  Tudors 
were  consistently  opposed  to  the  introduction  of  machinery 
which  was  injurious  to  handicraftsmen  or  would  lower 
the  standard  of  quality  in  the  articles  produced.  For  a 
long  period  they  appear  to  have  regarded  machinery  with 
the  same  hostility  as  did  the  Luddites  in  the  early  years 
of  the  nineteenth  century.  Inventive  genius  was  then 

termed  “  subtle  imagination,”  and  any  substitute  for  the 
manufacture  by  hands  and  feet  was  regarded  as  the  ruin 
of  the  industry  concerned.  For  this  reason  the  fulling 

mill  in  1482,  the  gig  mill  in  1552,  and  the  tucking  mill  in 

I555  were  discountenanced.  The  advisers  of  Edward  VI 
and  Elizabeth,  though  they  encouraged  foreign  trade,  were 
equally  opposed  to  mechanical  innovations.  James  I  and 
Charles  I  assumed  the  same  attitude.  They  stood  by  the 

1  The  Town  Labourer,  1760-1832,  by  J.  L.  Hammond  and  Barbara 
Hammond,  p.  13. 


240  A  Guildsmaris  Interpretation  of  History 


handicraftsmen  and  insisted  that  manufacturers  should  not 
dismiss  their  workmen  owing  to  fluctuations  of  trade  which 
had  been  artificially  created  by  themselves  in  their  pursuit 
of  a  quantitative  ideal  in  production.  Next  to  keeping 
men  in  employment,  the  chief  object  which  the  first  of  the 
Stuarts  set  before  themselves  was  the  maintenance  of  a 
high  standard  of  quality  in  the  goods  produced,  and  for 
this  purpose  they  sought  to  arrest  that  steady  deterioration 
of  quality  in  wares  which  had  followed  the  defeat  of  the 
Guilds,  by  providing  supervision  for  existing  industries. 

For  a  long  time  the  opposition  was  successful  in  checking 
the  mechanical  tendency  in  industry.  But  it  was  broken 
down  finally  by  the  combined  influence  of  two  forces — 
the  growth  of  foreign  trade  and  the  Puritan  Movement. 
The  discovery  of  America  had  provided  England  with  an 
apparently  inexhaustible  market  for  its  commodities.  This 
removed  the  economic  objection  to  change  by  providing 
an  outlet  for  the  surplus  products  which  accompanied  efforts 
to  place  production  on  a  quantitative  basis.  As  the  fear 
of  unemployment  was  diminished  the  opposition  was 
deprived  of  its  strongest  argument — the  only  one  perhaps 
that  would  carry  any  weight  with  the  middle-class  Puritans, 
who  were  now  becoming  such  a  power  in  the  land,  and  who 
joined  with  the  landlords  to  overthrow  Charles  at  the  Civil 
War.  With  the  defeat  of  Charles  the  old  order  came  to  an 
end.  Nothing  now  stood  in  the  way  of  business  and  enter¬ 
prise,  sweating  and  mechanical  industry.  The  mind  of 
the  Puritan  was  hard  and  mechanical,  devoid  alike  of  any 
love  of  beauty  or  human  sympathy.  The  Puritans  were 
in  the  main  recruited  from  the  trading  classes  of  the 
community,  and  denounced  the  restrictions  which  Charles 
imposed  on  machinery  as  an  interference  with  personal 
liberty.  Any  thought  of  putting  a  boundary  to  mechanical 
development  was  to  them  insufferable  tyranny,  and  there 
can  be  little  doubt  that  the  attitude  of  the  Stuarts  towards 
machinery  and  their  attempts  to  stem  the  tide  of  capitalist 
industry  was  a  chief  contributory  cause  of  the  Civil  War. 
Their  interferences  naturally  gave  rise  to  discontent  among 
men  whose  ruling  passion  was  that  of  avarice  and  whose 
natures  were  so  corrupted  as  to  exalt  this  besetting  sin 


The  Industrial  Revolution 


241 


of  theirs  to  the  level  of  a  virtue,  celebrated  at  a  later  day 
by  Samuel  Smiles.  This  perversion  of  the  nature  of  the 
Puritan  is  to  be  attributed  to  the  fact  that  he  denied 
himself  all  the  normal  pleasures  of  life.  He  was  cruel  to 
himself,  and  so  he  found  no  difficulty  in  being  cruel  to 
others,  especially  when  it  was  of  assistance  to  him  in  the 
making  of  money. 

It  was  because  the  Industrial  Revolution  was  dominated 
by  the  Puritan  spirit  that  it  was  so  relentless  in  its  cruelty. 
When  we  read  of  the  terrible  conditions  of  factory  life  in 
Lancashire  during  this  period,  of  workers  locked  in  factories, 
of  the  heartless  exploitation  of  women  and  young  children, 
of  the  ceaseless  day  and  night  work,  of  children  working  by 
relays  and  sleeping  in  filthy  beds  that  were  never  allowed 
to  cool,  of  weary  hands  and  feet  following  rapidly  the  quick 
movements  of  the  never-tiring  machines,  we  realize  that 
it  was  dominated  by  men  who  had  become  dehumanized, 
and  that  the  personal  independence  of  the  workers  must 
have  entirely  disappeared,  for  no  class  of  human  beings 
would  consent  to  submit  to  such  conditions  who  retained 
a  scrap  of  independence.  It  was  not  until  1832  that  the 
factory  working  day  was  reduced  to  twelve  hours  and  to 
ten  hours  in  1847.  It  was  n°t  without  good  reason  that 
at  Ashton  in  1831  it  was  declared  “  that  the  negroes  were 
slaves  in  name  but  the  factory  employees  were  slaves  in 
reality/  ’  1 

What  happened  in  England  appears  to  have  happened 
wherever  industrialism  has  been  introduced.  The  Prussian 
Government  deliberately  dispossessed  the  Polish  peasantry 
of  their  lands  in  order  to  ensure  a  cheap  supply  of  labour 
for  their  factories.  America  still  exploits  the  cheap  labour 
of  Eastern  Europeans,  while  until  quite  recently  child 
labour  was  exploited  in  the  cotton  mills  of  the  Southern 
States  almost  as  mercilessly  as  it  was  in  England  before 
the  passing  of  the  Factory  Acts.  The  Swadeshi  Movement 
is  closely  associated  with  the  introduction  of  Industrialism 
into  India,  and  under  its  auspices  the  same  evils  are  being 
*  created.  Just  what  the  factory  system  is  beginning  to 

1  The  Town  Labourer,  1760-1832,  by  J.  L.  Hammond  and  Barbara 
Hammond,  p.  18. 


16 


242  A  Guildsmari’s  Interpretation  of  History 


mean  for  India  is  to  be  inferred  from  a  recent  report  of 
the  Indian  Factory  Commission  :  “In  daylight  mills  the 
average  working  time  for  the  whole  year  is  twelve  hours 
and  five  minutes  ;  in  mills  fitted  with  electric  light  thirteen 
to  thirteen  and  a  half  hours/’  But  the  Commissioners  say 
“  in  some  provinces  the  law  is  ignored  to  an  extent  not 
hitherto  imagined.  The  law  referring  to  the  half-hour’s 
recess  is  generally  disregarded  in  rice  mills,  grinding  factories 
and  flour  mills  throughout  India.”  In  Bombay  the  factory 
operatives  inhabit  slums  of  the  most  wretched  character, 
crowded  and  insanitary.  Indeed,  India  appears  to  be  light- 
heartedly  plunging  into  the  sufferings  which  are  the 
inevitable  accompaniment  of  factory  production.1 

Nowadays  the  Industrial  system  encompasses  us  on 
all  sides,  and  the  question  may  be  asked,  Has  the  system 
come  to  stay  or  are  the  difficulties  in  which  it  finds  itself 
to-day  the  beginning  of  the  end  ?  If  the  answer  to  this 
question  depended  upon  votes  I  doubt  not  there  would 
be  an  overwhelming  majority  in  favour  of  its  retention, 
for  the  mass  of  people  to-day  are  so  much  a  part  of  the 
system  as  to  be  incapable  of  understanding  how  the  needs 
of  society  could  be  met  apart  from  our  huge  machinery. 
They  fail  altogether  to  realize  that  in  the  fifteenth  century 
the  wages  of  the  town  artisan  worked  out  at  six  or  seven 
times  the  cost  of  his  board,  and  the  agricultural  labourer 
earned  two-thirds  of  this  amount.  Though  nearly  every¬ 
body  is  dissatisfied  with  the  present  order  of  society,  very 
few  people  suspect  that  there  is  any  connection  between 
the  evils  they  deplore  and  industrial  methods  of  production. 
Others,  realizing  that  the  social  problem  preceded  the 
Industrial  Revolution,  are  disposed  to  dismiss  the  industrial 
problem  as  a  false  issue.  Neither  our  own  nor  future  genera¬ 
tions,  they  contend,  can  escape  the  'influence  of  modern 
technology. 

Now  quite  apart  from  the  issue  as  to  whether  modern 
technology  is  entitled  to  the  respect  with  which  it  is  cus¬ 
tomary  to  regard  it,  it  is  manifest  that  it  has  been  reared 
on  a  base  of  social  and  economic  injustice  and  that  it  is 

1  See  Essays  in  National  Idealism,  by  Ananda  K.  Coomaraswamy, 
pp.  157-8  (P.  Natesan  &  Co.,  Madras;  Probsthain  &  Co.,  London). 


The  Industrial  Revolution 


243 


maintained  to-day  by  a  highly  complex  system  of  finance. 
It  follows,  therefore,  that  any  change  which  threatens  this 
basis  must  react  on  the  technology.  If  the  highly  complex 
system  of  finance  were  to  break  down,  as  it  already  shows 
signs  of  doing,  modern  technology  would  be  involved  in 
the  catastrophe.  A  very  few  years  of  social  confusion 
and  the  fabric  of  technology  would  be  in  pieces.  For  whereas 
a  simple  or  primitive  technology  can  speedily  recover  from 
violent  upheavals,  a  highly  complex  and  artificial  one  cannot, 
because  its  maintenance  is  dependent  upon  a  high  degree 
of  co-operation.  The  imminence  of  an  economic  break¬ 
down  which  is  becoming  generally  admitted,  raises,  therefore, 
the  question,  Could  the  modern  technology  be  rebuilt  after 
the  breakdown  ? 

Now,  it  is  my  contention  that  the  economic  and  psycho¬ 
logical  conditions  necessary  to  reconstruct  it  will  be  absent. 
Once  there  is  a  breakdown  the  spell  that  blinds  the  modern 
world  will  be  broken  and  all  the  anarchistic  tendencies 
of  the  modern  man  will  be  liberated.  Every  popular  demand 
to-day  is  for  something  which  is  incompatible  with  the 
industrial  order.  That  this  incompatibility  is  not  recognized 
is  due  to  the  fact  that  few  people  trouble  to  carry  ideas 
to  their  logical  conclusions  and  imagine  they  can  eat  their 
cake  and  have  it  at  the  same  time.  The  realization  of 
these  demands  will,  so  far  as  the  Industrial  system  is  con¬ 
cerned,  be  like  putting  new  wine  into  old  bottles,  and  it 
will  burst  the  bottles.  The  Industrial  system  demands  for 
its  maintenance  the  servitude  of  the  workers,  while  the 
workers  demand  liberty.  The  life  and  soul  of  the  system 
is  the  race  for  profits  ;  the  workers  demand  production 
shall  be  for  use  and  not  for  profit.  Its  finance  and  tech¬ 
nology  involve  a  highly  centralized  control ;  the  workers 
demand  a  distributive  initiative.  This  demand  for  some¬ 
thing  which  is  incompatible  with  the  industrial  ideal  is  not 
only  confined  to  the  consciously  organized  political  workers  ; 
it  is  made  by  individuals  in  their  private  capacity  in  every 
rank  of  society.  Industrialism,  built  upon  the  division  of 
labour,  denies  men  pleasure  in  their  work.  The  conse¬ 
quence  is  that  men  seek  happiness  in  other  ways,  in  the 
pursuit  of  pleasure  in  their  leisure,  in  the  excitement  of 


244  A  Guildsman’s  Interpretation  of  History 


gambling.  Both  of  these  things  tend  to  undermine  the 
old  hard  Puritanical  morale  which  built  up  and  maintained 
the  system.  The  gambling  spirit  in  trade  has,  through 
profiteering,  dislocated  the  economic  system,  and  led  men 
to  trust  to  chance  rather  than  hard  work  for  success  in  life. 
The  craving  for  pleasure  has  become  such  that  only  the 
external  pressure  of  circumstances  can  keep  men  at  work. 
The  reaction  against  speeding  up  has  come.  Nobody 
nowadays  wants  to  do  any  work.  The  old  incentives  are 
gone.  Interest  has  gone  out  of  work,  and  there  is  no  pros¬ 
pect  of  the  workmen  setting  up  in  business  on  his  own 
account,  which  up  to  a  generation  ago  preserved  a  certain 
morale  in  industry.  Experience  in  large  organizations  has 
taught  men  that  success  and  promotion  do  not  come  to 
the  conscientious  or  capable  worker,  but  to  the  toady  and 
bluffer.  All  this  is  demoralizing,  and  provides  no  basis 
for  the  future  reconstruction  of  industry  on  a  mechanical 
basis.  Now  that  the  workers  are  organized,  the  demand 
of  the  rank  and  file  is  not  to  control  industry.  They  have 
too  strong  a  sense  of  human  values  to  desire  that  but 
to  get  through  the  day  with  the  least  possible  effort.  The 
reason  for  this  is  that  what  the  workers  in  their  hearts 
really  desire  is  control  of  their  own  lives  in  the  same  way 
that  the  hand-loom  weavers  had  control ;  and  it  is  because 
mass  production  everywhere  stands  between  them  and 
such  control  that  subconsciously  they  everywhere  seek  the 
destruction  of  the  industrial  system.1 

In  these  circumstances,  if  industry  is  to  be  rebuilt 
after  the  economic  breakdown,  it  will  have  to  be  rebuilt 
upon  a  different  foundation,  and  its  central  aim  must  be 
to  give  back  to  men  pleasure  in  their  work.  A  rebuilt 
Industrialism  cannot  do  this,  because  its  central  principle 
is  that  of  the  division  of  labour.  It  is  all  very  well  for 
would-be  industrial  reformers  to  talk  about  stimulating 
the  creative  impulse  of  industry,  but  the  system  of  the 
division  of  labour  precludes  this  possibility.  I  confess  to 
a  complete  inability  to  understand  reformers  who  talk 

1  "  Capitalism  cannot  be  controlled.  But  it  can  be  destroyed  and 
replaced  by  a  workers’  Industrial  Republic  ”  ( The  State  :  its  Origin  and 
Function,  by  Wm.  Paul,  p.  195). 


The  Industrial  Revolution 


245 


about  “  stimulating  the  impulses  of  youth  for  creative 
existence  ”  and  don’t  challenge  the  system  of  the  division 
of  labour.  I  doubt  very  much  whether  they  mean  any¬ 
thing.  Nay,  I  do  not  doubt  it ;  I  am  sure  of  it.  We  know 
that  the  system  of  the  division  of  labour  was  the  great 
factor  in  the  destruction  of  the  creative  impulse,  and  we 
may  be  sure  that  the  impulse  will  not  reappear  until  the 
system  is  destroyed.  It  came  into  existence  for  the  pur¬ 
poses  of  exploitation,  and  it  will  go  with  it.  If  men  are 
ever  to  regain  control  over  their  environment,  the  system 
of  the  division  of  labour  will  need  to  be  broken,  since  so 
long  as  it  remains  the  mass  of  workers  will  be  at  the  mercy 
of  the  power  that  directs  the  system. 

But,  it  will  be  asked,  is  machinery  to  disappear  ?  It 
will  need  to  in  so  far  as  its  effect  has  been  to  enslave  man. 
Generally  speaking,  this  would  mean  that  small  machines 
would  be  permitted,  while  large  ones  would  be  forbidden 
on  the  principle  that  a  large  machine  tends  to  enslave  man, 
because  he  must  sacrifice  himself  mentally  and  morally 
to  keep  it  in  commission,  whereas  a  small  one  has  not  this 
effect,  because  it  can  be  turned  on  and  off  at  will.  Exceptions 
would  have  to  be  made  to  this  rule,  as  in  the  case  of  pumping 
and  lifting  machinery  where  no  question  of  keeping  it  in 
commission  necessarily  enters.  The  difficulty  of  deciding 
where  a  machine  was  and  was  not  harmful  would  not  be 
difficult  to  determine  once  the  general  principle  were 
admitted  that  machinery  needs  to  be  subordinated  to  man. 


CHAPTER  XVII 


PARLIAMENTARIANISM  AND  THE  NINETEENTH 

CENTURY 

By  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  the  regime  estab¬ 
lished  by  the  Reformation  in  England  began  to  show  signs 
of  breaking  down.  The  pursuit  of  wealth  which  had  been 
the  vitalizing  principle  of  the  period  was  bringing  in  its 
train  all  manner  of  economic  and  political  complications. 
It  had  resulted  in  the  concentration  of  wealth  in  the  hands 
of  the  few.  Class  divisions  and  class  hatred  were  increasing. 
Money  made  in  trade  was  employed  in  land  speculation. 
Rents  were  raised  and  wages  reduced.  After  the  Napoleonic 
wars  there  came  economic  stagnation  and  widespread  un¬ 
employment.  Government  had  fallen  into  the  hands  of 
an  oligarchy  who  wielded  all  political  power.  Spiritually, 
society  was  dead.  Religion  had  reached  its  lowest  ebb. 
Architecture  had  become  a  lifeless  formula.  The  crafts, 
from  being  media  of  aesthetic  expression,  had  degenerated 
into  affairs  of  trade  and  commerce.  Some  slight  tradition 
of  art  lingered  in  painting,  which  henceforth  monopolized 
the  name  of  art.  Political  science  as  a  theory  of  the  social 
organism  had  entirely  disappeared,  and  its  place  had  been 
taken  by  a  new  political  economy  which  revived  the  laws 
of  the  jungle.  Nothing  now  remained  of  the  old  mediaeval 
order  but  its  human  tradition  which  survived  among  the 
poor.  Mankind  was  left 

Wandering  between  two  worlds,  one  dead, 

The  other  powerless  to  be  born. 

The  nineteenth  century  is  the  story  of  the  wandering. 

Though  the  world  was  dead,  it  was  not  without  hope. 
The  old  order  was  gone.  Most  people  thought  it  had  gone 

246 


Parliamentarianism  and  the  Nineteenth  Century  247 


for  ever,  for  out  of  its  ashes  new  hopes  had  arisen.  The 
French  Revolution  and  the  Industrial  Revolution  combined 
to  give  the  age  a  vision.  It  was  not  the  vision  of  a  new 
social  order,  but  of  idealized  anarchy,  for  the  impulse  of 
the  century  was  destructive  rather  than  constructive. 
Social  order  is  impossible  apart  from  privileges  involving 
reciprocal  rights  and  duties.  But  privileges  in  the  post- 
Reformation  period  had  come  into  disrepute,  partly  because 
they  were  monopolized  by  the  few  instead  of  being  shared 
by  the  many,  as  was  the  case  in  the  Middle  Ages,  but  mainly 
because  they  were  so  grossly  abused  by  those  who  claimed 
rights  but  repudiated  responsibilities.  Hence  it  was  that 
as  privileges  were  associated  with  tyranny,  liberty,  in  the 
minds  of  Radicals,  became  associated  with  the  abolition  of 
privileges,  with  the  negation  of  social  order,  with  anarchy. 
The  French  Revolution  had  given  men  the  hope  that  the 
governing  class  might  be  overthrown.  But  its  influence 
was  ephemeral  and  had  evaporated  by  the  middle  of  the 
century.  It  is  less  to  the  influence  of  the  French  Revolution 
than  to  that  of  the  Industrial  Revolution  that  we  must  look 
for  an  interpretation  of  the  nineteenth  century,  for  it  was 
the  central  driving  force  which  completely  disrupted  what 
remained  of  the  old  social  order,  reducing  it  to  atomic  units 
which  lacked  the  principle  of  cohesion  except  for  the  pur¬ 
poses  of  economic  and  military  defence.  That  so  little 
resistance  was  offered  to  the  socially  disintegrating  influence 
of  machinery  was  due  to  the  fact  that  the  automaton  came 
to  exercise  an  influence  over  the  minds  of  men  akin  to  that 
of  magic.  It  hypnotized  them  into  the  belief  that  there 
was  some  virtue  in  change  for  the  sake  of  change,  that 
what  was  new  was  in  some  mysterious  way  superior  to 
the  old  and  that  in  some  way  unknown  to  themselves  the 
machine  would,  if  given  free  play,  solve  all  social  problems. 
For  so  many  generations  had  the  descendants  of  the  men 
who  stole  the  Church  lands  drilled  into  the  minds  of  the 
people  the  idea  that  the  Middle  Ages  was  a  period  of  black 
tyranny,  ignorance,  superstition  and  poverty,  that  a  preju¬ 
dice  had  been  created  which  was  fatal  to  all  clear  thinking 
on  social  questions  and  credence  was  given  to  the  idea, 
enunciated  by  Adam  Smith,  that  poverty  was  due  to  lack 


248  A  Guildsmaris  Interpretation  of  History 


of  productive  power  instead  of  to  gross  social  and  economic 
injustice,  as  was  actually  the  case.  It  was  thus  that  during 
the  nineteenth  century  faith  in  the  benevolence  of  machinery 
became  the  faith  of  the  people.  Its  sufficiency  was  exalted 
into  a  dogma  above  and  beyond  discussion.  A  man  might 
question  God  but  not  the  machine — to  do  so  was  heresy 
in  the  nineteenth  century.  Hence  the  key  to  the  century 
is  not  to  be  found  in  ideas,  for  the  great  men  of  the  century 
left  no  permanent  impression  on  their  age,  but  in  this 
hypnotic  belief  in  progress  which  carried  all  before  it.  As 
the  machine  created  problem  after  problem,  barrier  after 
barrier  was  swept  away,  and  as  each  one  was  swept  away 
civilization  found  itself  somewhere  where  it  never  expected 
to  be. 

The  change  in  the  material  and  economic  base  of  society 
was  accompanied  by  the  growth  of  an  intellectual  fluidity 
"  which  is  really  not  so  much  a  definite  conviction  or 
emotion  as  a  rotting  or  a  deliquescence,  a  melting  and 
confounding  of  the  outlines  of  beliefs  and  desires,  a  going 
to  slush  of  all  values,  a  thawing  and  liquefaction  of  all  that 
was  hard  and  permanent  in  the  world.  .  .  .  The  whole  of 
modernism  is  an  attempt  to  obliterate  distinctions — to 
discover  similarity  and  unity  everywhere.  All  men  are 
equal,  men  are  the  same  as  women,  good  is  the  same  as 
evil,  freewill  does  not  exist,  catastrophe  has  no  place  in 
the  universe,  and  everything  is  gradually  evolved.’ *  1  The 
first  step  in  this  movement  towards  the  obliteration  of 
varieties  was  taken  by  Adam  Smith  in  the  Wealth  of 
Nations ;  the  last  was  taken  by  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  in 
the  Quintessence  of  Ibsenism.  It  was  Mr.  Shaw’s  strange 
ambition  to  emancipate  mankind  by  emptying  life  of  its 
remaining  contents,  but  the  more  Mr.  Shaw  seeks  to  change 
things  the  more  he  reveals  himself  a  child  of  the  established 
material  fact,  who  is  content  to  take  the  material  achieve¬ 
ment  for  granted  as  a  thing  of  permanence  and  stability. 
He  had  lived  all  his  life  in  a  world  of  illusions,  vainly 
imagining  he  was  at  work  laying  the  foundations  of  a  new 
social  order,  whereas  in  reality  he  was  doing  nothing  more 
or  less  than  assisting  to  remove  the  last  barrier  that  stood 

1  Letter  to  the  New  Age,  by  E.  Cowley,  November  13,  1913. 


Parliamentarianism  and  the  Nineteenth  Century  249 

between  industrial  civilization  and  its  final  catastrophe. 
For  catastrophe  became  inevitable  from  the  day  it  became 
the  fashion  for  men  to  deny  its  possibility  ;  for  when  the 
fear  of  catastrophe  was  removed  no  power  remained  capable 
of  restraining  the  forces  of  social  destruction.  These  crazy 
heretical  philosophers  were  followed  in  the  nineteenth 
century  because  they  were  the  only  people  who  could  set 
things  in  motion.  After  the  Napoleonic  wars  economic 
stagnation  had  overtaken  England  as  a  consequence  of 
the  concentration  of  wealth  in  the  hands  of  a  few.  In  the 
normal  course  of  affairs  this  undue  concentration  would 
have  led  to  a  revolution  in  England  as  it  did  in  France, 
but  this  was  averted  by  following  the  advice  of  these  false 
prophets  who  taught  the  governing  class  the  art  of  post¬ 
poning  the  crisis  by  extending  the  area  of  exploitation. 
This  was  the  secret  of  the  success  of  the  Free  Trade  policy  ; 
of  the  economic  relief  which  uncontrolled  machinery  brought. 
By  producing  large  quantities  of  goods  cheaply,  which 
enabled  our  manufacturers  to  exploit  distant  markets,  by 
the  development  of  railway  building  which  offered  new 
opportunities  for  investment  and  caused  a  great  shifting 
of  the  centres  of  population  from  villages  to  small  towns 
and  from  small  towns  to  big  ones,  activity  was  stimulated 
in  every  direction.  This  temporarily  decentralized  wealth 
and  brought  about  a  distributed  initiative.  The  prosperity 
thus  artificially  created  led  people  to  suppose  that  the 
principles  of  the  new  political  economy  were  eternally  true 
instead  of  being  a  mere  theoretical  justification  of  measures 
of  economic  expediency,  useful  at  a  particular  juncture 
but  with  no  finality  about  them.  The  supposed  central 
truth  of  the  new  economics  having  been  established  in 
this  way,  sophists  found  no  difficulty  in  persuading  the 
world  that  all  other  ideas  and  traditions  which  clashed 
with  the  demands  of  “  progress  ”  were  of  themselves  dated. 
Such  ideas,  they  affirmed,  might  be  true  at  one  stage  of 
social  evolution  but  not  at  another.  All  truth,  they  main¬ 
tained,  was  relative  ;  absolute  truth  did  not  exist. 

Meanwhile  people  who  had  preserved  their  mental 
balance  found  themselves  at  a  disadvantage.  To  them 
the  fallacies  of  the  new  gospel  were  manifest.  They  found 


250  A  Guildsman’s  Interpretation  of  History 


it  easy  to  expose  them,  but  impossible  to  base  any  practical 
activity  upon  the  truth  as  they  understood  it.  The  reason 
for  this  was  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  since  the  decline 
of  religion  and  art  the  links  between  them  and  the  popular 
mind  had  been  broken.  They  were  no  longer  understood. 
Hence  it  came  about  that  throughout  the  nineteenth 
century  efforts  were  made  by  means  of  experiments  and 
historical  research  to  find  lost  roads  and  to  recover  lost 
truths.  Efforts  were  made  to  revive  religion,  art  and  social 
science.  This  is  the  secret  of  the  great  intellectual  and 
scholastic  activity  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Its  aim 

was  to  enable  men  to  regain  that  grip  on  reality  which 
they  had  lost.  To  talk  about  the  nineteenth  century  as 
being  an  age  of  enlightenment  is  nonsense.  It  was  perhaps 
the  darkest  period  in  history,  when  the  great  traditions 
were  dead ;  when  great  men  groped  for  the  light  and 

ordinary  men  were  saved  from  despair  by  the  hypnotism 
of  the  machine. 

But  the  world  heeded  such  workers  little.  The  problems 
of  the  immediate  present  pressed  so  heavily  upon  the 

majority  that  they  were  in  no  mood  to  listen  to  any  gospel 

that  could  not  promise  immediate  results.  They  were 
impatient  with  men  who  took  longer  views.  Hence  it  was 
all  through  the  nineteenth  century  the  blind  led  the  blind. 
Politics  concerned  themselves  with  appearances  ;  realities 
lived  underground.  Two  men  only  who  were  prominent 
in  political  life  were  possessed  of  a  strong  sense  of  reality 
— Cobbett  and  Disraeli.  The  former  made  a  desperate 
effort  to  pump  realities  into  politics  from  below  ;  the  latter 
having  failed  to  pump  realities  into  them  from  above, 
came  to  accept  the  situation  and  exploit  it. 

Cobbett  towers  above  all  his  contemporaries  as  a  man 
in  touch  with  realities.  He  associated  himself  with  all 
the  Radicals  of  his  age  in  their  demand  for  the  reform  of 
Parliament.  Though  he  differed  with  them  fundamentally 
as  to  the  nature  of  the  problems  of  society,  he  saw  as  clearly 
as  they  did  the  need  of  Parliamentary  reform.  The  ideal 
of  government  as  it  existed  in  the  Middle  Ages  was  to  give 
protection  to  the  workers.  It  was  for  this  purpose  that 
charters  were  given  to  the  Guilds  and  the  Feudal  Lord 


Parliamentarianism  and  the  Nineteenth  Century  251 


held  his  position.  But  since  the  revival  of  Roman  Law, 
government  had  become  increasingly  associated  with  ex¬ 
ploitation,  and  after  the  Reformation  it  existed  for  little 
else.  The  plutocrats  who  controlled  it  not  only  refused 
to  give  the  people  economic  protection,  but  forbade  them 
to  organize  to  protect  themselves.  In  these  circumstances 
the  necessary  first  step  towards  reform  was  to  change  the 
Government,  but  as  Parliament  was  elected  upon  a  franchise 
which  was  limited  and  corrupt,  and  the  people  were 
deprived  of  any  place  in  the  social  scheme,  this  involved 
electoral  reform,  upon  which,  after  the  Napoleonic  wars 
came  to  an  end,  the  Radicals  concentrated  their  attention. 

Though  for  the  attainment  of  electoral  reform  Cobbett 
co-operated  with  the  Radicals,  he  took  a  different  view 
to  them  on  almost  everything,  and  looking  at  the  situation 
from  the  point  of  view  of  to-day  it  is  possible  to  say  that 
Cobbett  was  in  the  main  right.  He  exhibited  a  wider  grip 
of  the  social  problem  than  perhaps  any  one  in  the  nineteenth 
century,  not  to  forget  Ruskin.  Though  he  recognized  that 
the  governing  class  was  corrupt,  he  nevertheless  recognized 
that  the  Tory  stood  for  many  things  that  were  true.  He 
did  not  fall  into  that  most  hopeless  of  modern  errors  of 
assuming  that  because  men  did  not  live  up  to  their  pro¬ 
fessions  therefore  their  professed  faith  was  at  fault,  or  that 
because  a  creed  contained  a  certain  admixture  of  error 
it  might  not  contain  a  large  element  of  truth.  In  the  main 
Cobbett  was  content  to  take  the  old  political  philosophies 
and  traditions  for  granted,  and  directed  his  attacks  at 
the  governing  class  for  misusing  them.  His  fine  traditional 
and  historic  sense  was  here  his  salvation.  Cobbett’s  History 
of  the  Reformation  may  not  be  a  work  of  scholarship,  but 
it  is  a  work  of  genius.  In  it  he  shows  an  insight  into  the 
Reformation  and  its  political  and  economic  consequence 
which  throws  a  flood  of  light  on  history  and  the  economic 
problem.  It  is  superior  to  the  economic  histories  of  more 
recent  times  to  the  extent  that  it  recognizes  the  existence 
of  other  things  than  economics. 

While  Cobbett  rose  superior  to  the  current  historical 
prejudices  he  saw  more  clearly  than  any  other  man  the 
trend  of  his  age.  Industrialism  and  Adam  Smith  he  hated. 


252  A  Guildsmaris  Interpretation  of  History 


and  indeed  it  was  the  combination  of  the  two  that  made 
Industrialism  such  a  scourge.  But  in  his  protests  against 
factory  life  he  appears  to  have  stood  alone  among  prominent 
reformers.  The  Radicals  who  came  after  him  accepted 
Industrialism  as  an  established  fact,  and  Radicalism  lost 
its  hold  on  the  rural  population.  There  can  but  be  one 
reason  for  this — that  the  peasantry  felt  that  the  Radicals 
in  accepting  Industrialism  and  Adam  Smith  had  deserted 
their  cause  and  that,  bad  as  the  Tories  were,  the  Liberals 
stood  for  something  far  worse.  They  felt  instinctively 
that  the  Radicals’  gospel  of  salvation  was  calculated  to 
make  things  worse  for  them  by  rendering  the  circumstances 
of  their  life  even  more  unstable  ;  and  they  were  right. 

Not  only  did  Radicalism  by  the  support  it  gave  to  the 
Manchester  School  lose  the  peasantry,  but  it  divided  the 
forces  of  reform  in  the  towns.  It  separated  Middle-Class 
from  Working-Class  reformers.  The  Reform  Bill  of  1832 
incorporated  the  new  industrial  towns  and  abolished  the 
rotten  boroughs,  but  it  did  not  secure  payment  of  members. 
Disappointment  with  the  Reform  Bill  led  to  the  Chartist 
agitation,  which  was  a  combination  of  the  old  Radical 
political  party  and  the  new  Socialist  and  Trade  Union 
Movements.  It  revived  the  Radical  programme  of  1816. 
The  agitation,  after  being  carried  on  for  eleven  years,  reached 
a  climax  when  the  Revolution  of  1848  in  France  aroused 
them  to  their  last  great  effort.  But  it  all  came  to  nothing. 
After  1848  the  Trade  Unionists  retired  from  political  agita¬ 
tion  and  directed  their  attention  exclusively  to  the  work 
of  building  up  their  own  internal  organizations — a  policy 
which  they  continued  until  in  our  day  the  Socialist  agitation 
brought  them  once  more  into  the  political  field.  But  in 
the  meantime  they  succeeded  in  so  consolidating  their 
strength  that  with  their  re-emergence  they  have  become 
a  force  to  be  reckoned  with  both  in  the  political  and  indus¬ 
trial  world.  There  is  no  reason  to  doubt,  therefore,  that 
their  decision  in  1848  to  retire  from  political  agitation  was 
the  one  that  wisdom  dictated. 

But  there  was  another  cause  for  the  decline  of  working- 
class  political  agitation  after  1848 — the  development  of 
ailway  building.  It  was  this  perhaps  more  than  anything 


Parliamentarianism  and  the  Nineteenth  Century  253 

else  that  broke  the  power  of  the  Chartist  agitation  by  pro¬ 
viding  an  abundance  of  employment,  which,  except  for 
short  periods  of  trade  depression,  lasted  until  the  end  of 
the  century,  and  which  reconciled  the  workers  to  the  fact 
of  Industrialism,  if  not  whole-heartedly,  at  least  to  the 
extent  of  persuading  them  that  resistance  to  it  was  hope¬ 
less.  It  is  well  to  remember  that  the  workers  at  any  time 
have  never  really  believed  in  it.  In  its  early  days  they 
definitely  disbelieved  in  it  and  did  all  in  their  power  to 
resist  its  encroachments,  going  so  far  in  the  days  of  the 
Luddite  riots  as  to  break  up  machinery.  If  they  came 
finally  to  acquiesce  if  not  to  believe  in  Industrialism,  it 
is  because  the  old  order  had  so  completely  disappeared 
that  they  had  no  longer  anything  with  which  to  compare 
it.  But  still  they  are  restless  under  it  and  must  increasingly 
become  so  until  it  is  finally  destroyed  ;  for  a  force  so 
mechanical  runs  contrary  to  every  healthy  normal  human 
instinct,  and  no  peace  or  social  and  political  stability  is 
possible  so  long  as  it  remains. 

The  immediate  political  effect  of  the  acquiescence  of 
the  working  class  in  industrialism  was  their  acceptance 
of  the  political  leadership  of  the  new  capitalists  into  whose 
hands  political  power  had  passed.  They  were  wealthy, 
and  were  able  successfully  to  dispute  political  power  with 
the  landed  plutocracy  (whom  it  is  customary  to  call  the  old 
aristocracy),  of  whose  rule  the  people  had  had  such  a  bitter 
experience.  The  new  capitalists  had  restored  prosperity. 
Perhaps  after  all  there  was  something  to  be  said  for  them. 
There  are  two  sides  to  every  question  ;  the  working  class 
might  not  be  the  entire  receptacles  of  political  wisdom. 
In  some  such  way  as  this,  I  imagine,  a  working  man  would 
reason.  Though  he  could  not  see  eye  to  eye  with  the 
capitalists,  he  nevertheless  was  up  against  the  fact  that 
trade  boomed  and  the  condition  of  the  working  class  was 
improving.  In  such  circumstances  perhaps  the  best  policy 
was  to  support  the  capitalists  in  their  general  policy,  while 
by  means  of  better  working-class  organization  to  secure 
for  the  workers  a  greater  share  of  the  wealth  produced. 
It  was  a  perfectly  intelligible  position,  and  it  is  not  sur¬ 
prising  that  it  gained  the  day. 


254  A  Guildsman’s  Interpretation  of  History 


But  there  was  another  reason  for  the  support  they  gave 
— the  success  of  the  Free  Trade  policy  as  exemplified  by 
the  repeal  of  the  Corn  Laws.  England  had  become  to 
some  extent  dependent  on  the  supply  of  foreign  corn. 
During  the  Napoleonic  wars  this  supply  was  so  hampered 
that  wheat  rose  to  famine  prices,  and  with  this  rise  there 
came  an  increase  in  rents  and  the  price  of  land.  But  after 
peace  was  made  prices  began  to  fall,  and  the  landlords 
demanded  duties  on  corn  to  keep  up  the  price  of  wheat. 
The  manufacturers,  on  the  other  hand,  wanted  cheap  food 
for  their  workpeople  in  order  to  be  able  to  pay  them  low 
wages.  As  a  compromise,  the  Corn  Laws  of  1814  and  1828 
were  enacted.  They  provided  a  sliding  scale  of  duties 
which  rose  as  prices  fell,  and  fell  as  prices  rose.  But  the 
compromise  did  not  for  long  remain  satisfactory  to  the 
manufacturers.  While  the  Chartists  were  agitating  for 
political  reform  an  Anti-Corn-Law  League  was  started 
to  procure  the  abolition  of  import  duties  on  grain.  The 
agitation  which  they  carried  on  all  over  the  country  secured 
the  support  of  the  workers,  who  were  persuaded  that  the 
repeal  of  the  Corn  Laws  would  increase  the  value  of  their 
wages.  As  a  consequence  of  the  agitation,  the  failure  of 
the  potato  crop  in  Ireland  and  a  bad  harvest  in  England, 
Sir  Robert  Peel  in  1846  carried  a  measure  for  the  gradual 
abolition  of  the  corn  duties.  The  repeal  of  the  duties  did 
not  immediately  affect  the  price  of  corn,  but  it  enormously 
increased  the  supply.  The  price  of  corn  fell  later,  when 
the  English  consumer  got  the  benefit  of  the  decreasing  prices 
which  followed  the  exploitation  of  virgin  lands  in  America 
and  the  colonies.  The  repeal  of  the  Corn  Laws  was  followed 
by  the  abolition  of  duties  on  hundreds  of  articles  and  the 
reduction  of  duties  on  others  ;  direct  taxation  in  the  form 
of  income  tax  being  resorted  to  in  order  to  replace  the  loss 
of  revenue. 

Free  Trade  during  the  nineteenth  century  became  such 
a  fundamental  principle  of  English  financial  policy,  and 
it  coincided  so  entirely  with  the  period  of  industrial  expan¬ 
sion  and  prosperity,  that  it  has  come  to  be  believed  in  by 
numberless  people  as  something  sacrosanct — the  magic 
formula  of  Free  being  sufficient  to  invest  it  for  such  people 


Parliamentarianism  and  the  Nineteenth  Century  255 

with  a  halo  of  sanctity  which  renders  them  entirely  oblivious 
to  its  practical  consequences.  But  are  there  any  real 
grounds  for  such  a  faith  ?  As  a  measure  of  temporary 
economic  expediency,  the  repeal  of  the  Corn  Laws  may  be 
justified,  though  as  far  as  I  can  see  there  are  no  grounds 
for  supposing  that  the  prosperity  of  the  years  which  followed 
the  repeal  was  caused  by  it.  It  coincided  with  the  period 
of  railway  building,  and  there  are  far  stronger  reasons  for 
supposing  that  money  began  to  circulate  freely  because 
of  the  employment  that  railway  building  gave  than  because 
of  the  Free  Trade  policy.  It  would  have  been  well  for 
England  if  the  repeal  of  the  Corn  Laws  had  only  been 
justified  as  a  measure  of  expediency,  but  unfortunately, 
as  it  was  exalted  into  a  principle  that  was  sacrosanct,  it 
was  followed  at  a  later  date  by  most  serious  consequences. 
Firstly,  it  allowed  the  importation  of  sweated  goods  to  bring 
down  the  wages  of  labour  in  certain  trades  ;  then  it  operated 
to  destroy  agriculture  and  depopulated  rural  areas  by 
bringing  the  English  wheat  into  competition  with  the 
wheat  grown  on  the  virgin  lands  of  America  and  the  colonies  ; 
while,  lastly,  it  has  built  up  a  vested  interest  inimical  to 
the  interests  of  the  country.  It  is  well  that  we  should  not 
lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  Free  Trade  confers  privileges 
just  as  much  as  Protection  ;  the  difference  being  that 
whereas  manufacturers  and  farmers  profit  by  Protection, 
merchants  and  shippers  profit  by  Free  Trade.  Both  give 
rise  to  political  corruption,  but  whereas  in  one  case  it  is 
open  corruption,  in  the  other  it  is  concealed. 

That  both  Free  Trade  and  Protection  should  give  such 
unsatisfactory  results  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  issue  between 
them  is  a  false  issue  that  arises  in  the  absence  of  Guilds 
to  control  production  and  prices.  No  stable  economic 
system  would  begin  with  economic  expediency,  whether  in 
the  interests  of  manufacturers  or  merchants,  but  with  the 
protection  of  the  standard  of  life  of  the  worker.  In  the 
absence  of  Guilds  it  is  better  for  a  community  to  suffer 
from  the  corruption  incidental  to  Protection  than  from 
the  corruption  incidental  to  Free  Trade,  for  its  social  and 
economic  effects  are  less  harmful,  not  only  because  the 
corruption  which  accompanies  Protection  is  more  open, 


256  A  Guildsmaris  Interpretation  of  History 


and  can  therefore  be  more  easily  attacked,  but  because  it 
must  remain  impossible  for  a  community  to  attain  economic 
stability  that  allows  the  workers  in  any  industry  to  be 
placed  at  the  mercy  of  the  fluctuations  of  prices  in  distant 
markets  and  to  be  undercut  by  the  importation  of  sweated 
goods  from  other  countries  as  happened  under  Free  Trade. 
The  only  remedy  finally  is  to  be  found  in  a  restoration  of 
the  Guilds,  in  connection  with  which  Protection  would 
take  its  place  as  the  natural  corollary  of  a  system  of  fixed 
prices  controlling  the  currency. 

But  there  are  further  evils.  Free  Trade  having  placed 
power  in  the  hands  of  merchants  and  financiers,  establishes 
the  trader’s  point  of  view  in  politics.  With  it  has  come 
the  pernicious  habit  of  viewing  social  and  industrial 
activities  primarily  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  profit 
accruing  from  them  rather  than  from  that  of  the  well¬ 
being  of  the  community  as  a  whole,  and  this,  as  we  have 
had  experience  during  the  war,  may  on  occasion  bring 
disaster.  In  peace-times  this  point  of  view  was  operative 
in  the  work  of  social  disintegration.  It  has  led  to  the  decrease 
of  the  production  of  necessary  and  desirable  things  and 
diverted  labour  to  the  production  of  useless  and  undesirable 
things,  or,  in  other  words,  it  has  exalted  secondary  above 
primary  production.  Only  a  Government  controlled  by 
trading  interests  could  be  blind  to  the  folly  of  allowing  things 
to  drift  in  this  way,  or  if  not  blind,  at  any  rate  powerless 
to  devise  means  of  changing  the  current.  The  Nemesis 
that  is  overtaking  us  is  the  natural  and  inevitable  conse¬ 
quence  of  allowing  the  direction  of  the  politics  and  industry 
of  the  country  to  be  determined  solely  by  considerations 
of  the  markets.  Societies  that  are  stable  act  otherwise. 
The  Medievalists,  like  Aristotle,  recognized  the  danger 
inherent  in  allowing  the  trading  class  to  exercise  an  undue 
preponderance  of  influence  in  national  policy. 

The  reason  why  in  the  nineteenth  century  the  trading 
interest  was  able  to  carry  all  before  it  was  ultimately  due 
to  the  complete  disappearance  of  religion  and  art  and  the 
communal  ideal  of  society,  though  immediately  it  was 
due  to  intellectual  confusion,  stupidity,  and  the  hypnotic 
influence  of  machinery  which  prevented  men  from  giving 


Parliamentaricinism  and  the  Nineteenth  Century  257 

serious  consideration  to  any  line  of  reasoning  that  came 
into  collision  with  its  uncontrolled  use.  This  was  the 
reason  why  Ruskin  was  thrown  aside.  He  laid  the  basis 
of  a  tradition  of  thought  that  might  have  borne  fruit  in 
these  days  if  men  could  only  have  held  fast  to  that  which 
was  good  when  appearances  were  against  them.  But  faith 
in  reality  was  weak  in  the  nineteenth  century  ;  men  trusted 
entirely  in  appearances,  and  so  it  came  about  that  when 
the  conclusions  of  the  Manchester  School  were  cast  aside 
they  still  clung  to  its  utilitarian  philosophy  and  habit  of 
mind.  Disraeli  in  the  days  of  his  youth  made  an  effort 
to  bring  the  age  back  to  realities.  Sybil  was  a  valiant 
attempt  to  persuade  the  governing  class  to  face  the  facts 
of  the  situation.  He  saw  the  trouble  arising  from  intel¬ 
lectual  confusion,  class  stupidity,  the  absurdity  and  un¬ 
reality  of  the  Party  System,  and  from  the  stiff-necked 
attitude  of  capital  towards  labour.  Sybil  having  missed 
fire,  he  became  disheartened,  and  by  the  time  he  came  to 
write  Lothair  he  had  abandoned  his  generous  dreams  and 
taken  to  ironical  badinage.  Popanilla  is  a  magnificent 
burlesque  on  the  utilitarian  philosophy.  It  demonstrates 
clearly  that  he  was  alive  to  the  contradictions  and  absurd¬ 
ities  in  which  the  Radicals  were  involved.  But  while  he 
saw  clearly  what  was  wrong,  he  had  no  clear  vision  as  to 
what  was  right.  This  was  perhaps  the  secret  of  his  political 
career,  and  has  led  to  much  misunderstanding  and  mis¬ 
representation.  He  came  to  fight  on  the  Conservative 
side,  not  because  he  believed  in  the  Conservatives,  but 
because  he  disbelieved  in  the  Radicals ;  not  because  his 
sympathies  were  undemocratic,  but  because  he  disbelieved 
in  the  democratic  leaders,  whom  he  had  sufficient  insight 
to  see  did  not  represent  the  people.  In  his  efforts  to  defeat 
a  party  of  unconscious  humbugs  he  became  a  conscious 
humbug  himself,  for  he  came  cynically  to  accept  plutocracy 
though  inwardly  despising  it,  while  Gladstone  idealized 
its  achievements  because  he  never  understood  their  inward¬ 
ness.  Still,  in  spite  of  their  difference,  Disraeli  and 
Gladstone  really  co-operated  for  the  same  end,  to  retain 
power  for  the  plutocracy,  and  under  their  combined 
leadership  politics  drifted  farther  and  farther  away 

17 


258  A  Guildsmari’s  Interpretation  of  History 


from  realities.  The  smugness  and  complacency  of  the 
later  Victorian  age  was  only  shaken  by  the  emergence 
of  the  Irish  problem  into  the  forefront  of  political  issues. 
Yet  all  the  while  great  changes  were  being  prepared  under¬ 
ground.  But  Parliament  was  cognizant  of  none  of  them. 
It  floated  about  on  the  surface  of  things,  skilfully  evading 
every  real  issue  until  at  length,  in  1906,  it  was  awakened 
from  its  dreams  of  false  security  by  the  arrival  of  the 
Labour  Party  at  the  House  of  Commons,  when  the  govern¬ 
ing  class  first  became  seriously  aware  of  the  democratic 
upheaval  that  was  taking  place.  The  popular  disappoint¬ 
ment  with  the  performances  of  the  Labour  Party  led  to  a 
reaction  against  Parliamentarianism  which  coincided  with 
the  great  strikes  of  1911,  from  which  time  the  Industrial 
Movement  may  be  dated. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 


ON  LIMITED  LIABILITY  COMPANIES 

In  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  a  series  of  Acts 
of  Parliament  were  passed  conferring  upon  joint-stock 
companies  the  privilege  of  limited  liability.  As  the  conduct 
of  industry  has  been  completely  revolutionized  and  the 
structure  of  society  transformed  through  the  promotion 
of  limited  companies  which  followed  the  passing  of  these 
Acts,  they  are  to  be  reckoned  among  the  most  important 
events  of  the  century,  and  it  is  necessary  for  an  under¬ 
standing  of  the  problems  of  to-day  that  their  significance 
be  understood.  Their  reaction  upon  the  social  and  indus¬ 
trial  life  of  the  community  has  been  to  place  society  at 
the  mercy  of  an  impersonal  and  intangible  tyranny  which 
by  paralysing  all  healthy  and  normal  activities  reacts  to 
introduce  a  kind  of  fatalism  into  economic,  social  and 
political  developments  by  placing  every  one  at  the  mercy 
of  an  elusive  financial  machine.  It  is  to  be  observed  that 
this  new  economic  development  which  carried  the  principle 
of  exploitation  to  its  logical  conclusion  by  divorcing  posses¬ 
sion  from  the  control  of  industry  was,  like  all  previous 
economic  developments,  preceded  by  acts  of  legislation. 

Something  approximating  to  limited  liability  existed 
in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth.  When  in  the  year  1600  she 
acceded  to  the  request  of  the  East  India  merchants  for 
a  Charter  of  Incorporation,  when  they  had  urged  that  the 
trade  with  the  Indies  was  too  remote  to  be  capable  of  proper 
management  without  a  “  joint  and  united  stock/'  she 
created  ipso  facto  a  limited  liability  company.  For  as  the 
Common  Law  then  only  recognized  individuals  and  corpor¬ 
ations  as  legal  entities,  the  effect  of  the  grant  of  a  charter 
to  a  trading  company  was  to  grant  a  species  of  limited 

259 


260  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


liability  such  as  exists  in  the  case  of  a  company  limited 
by  shares  that  are  fully  paid  up,  under  the  Acts  now  in 
force  ;  though  as  the  trade  of  the  East  India  Company 
was  so  profitable,  no  question  of  the  liability  for  debts  ever 
arose.  Hitherto  merchants  engaged  in  foreign  trade  had 
been  organized  under  “  regulated  ”  companies  like  the 
Russia,  the  Turkey,  and  the  Eastland  Companies.  They 
were  really  Merchant  Guilds  whose  members  enjoyed  a 
monopoly  of  their  specific  trade  in  a  given  district,  but 
were  originally  in  no  sense  financially  associated  or  liable 
for  one  another’s  engagements.  The  Charter  of  the  East 
India  Company  in  acknowledging  joint-stock  introduced  a 
new  principle  of  trade  organization  which  was  not  by  any 
means  popular  with  merchants  generally.  The  merchants 
of  the  “  regulated  ”  companies  sneered  at  the  incorporated 
joint-stock  East  India  Company  because  the  latter  were 
unable  to  “  breed-up  ”  merchants,  seeing  that  “  any  one 
who  is  a  master  of  money  may  purchase  a  share  of  their 
trade  and  joint-stock.” 

On  account  of  its  unpopularity  the  joint-stock  principle 
made  little  headway.  As  late  as  the  end  of  the  seventeenth 
century  there  were  only  three  joint-stock  companies  in 
existence — the  East  India,  the  Royal  African,  and  the 
Hudson  Bay  Companies.  In  the  early  eighteenth  century 
private  joint-stock  companies  began  to  be  formed  whose 
legal  position  was  uncertain,  for  monopolies  for  foreign 
trade  had  been  abolished  in  the  latter  part  of  the  reign 
of  James  I.  One  of  these,  the  South  Sea  Company,  which 
was  organized  to  exploit  the  unknown  wealth  of  South 
America,  managed  by  bribes  to  ministers  and  by  promising 
to  reduce  the  national  debt  to  secure  in  1720  a  Charter 
of  Incorporation.  It  was  in  vain  that  Walpole  warned 
the  Ministry  and  the  country  against  this  dream  of  wealth. 
Both  went  mad.  A  wave  of  reckless  financial  speculation 
overwhelmed  the  country.  Bubble  company  was  followed 
by  bubble  company  until  the  inevitable  crash  came, 
bringing  a  general  ruin  in  its  train.  It  was  followed  by 
the  Bubble  Act,  which  forbade  the  formation  of  companies 
without  the  sanction  of  Crown  or  Parliament  as  “a 
mischievous  delusion  calculated  to  ensnare  the  unwary 


On  Limited  Liability  Companies 


261 


public.”  The  Act  appears  to  have  remained  largely  a 
dead  letter,  probably  because  after  the  South  Sea  Bubble, 
in  which  many  companies  came  to  grief  in  addition  to  the 
one  bearing  its  name,  political  and  mercantile  opinion  was 
so  averse  to  the  formation  of  joint-stock  companies  that 
few  attempts  at  company  promotion  were  made,  and  so 
things  remained  until  the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  when  the  Industrial  Revolution,  by  opening  out 
new  fields  of  industry  with  which  it  was  impossible  for 
individual  capitalists  to  cope,  gradually  introduced  a  change 
in  public  opinion.  In  1825  an  Act  was  passed  repealing 
the  Bubble  Act,  and  encouragement  was  given  to  the 
formation  of  companies.  By  this  statute  the  Crown  was 
empowered  to  grant  Charters  of  Incorporation,  and  at 
the  same  time  to  declare  that  the  persons  incorporated 
should  be  individually  liable  for  the  debts  of  the  body 
corporated.  Public  opinion  in  those  days  did  not  think 
it  desirable  that  the  members  of  joint-stock  companies 
should  be  allowed  to  limit  their  liability  to  a  specified 
amount.  In  1834  an  Act  was  passed  giving  such  companies 
the  privilege  of  bringing  and  defending  actions  and  other 
legal  proceedings  in  the  name  of  an  officer  of  a  company. 

Hitherto,  in  order  for  a  joint-stock  company  to  be  in¬ 
corporated,  it  was  necessary  for  it  to  obtain  a  charter  from 
the  Crown  or  a  special  Act  of  Parliament,  but  in  1844  a 
new  departure  was  made  enabling  companies,  with  certain 
exceptions,  to  obtain  a  Certificate  of  Incorporation  from  the 
Registrar  without  having  recourse  to  Crown  or  Parliament, 
but  still  with  unlimited  liability.  In  1855  the  principle 
of  limited  liability  triumphed  when  power  was  given  to 
companies  to  obtain  a  Certificate  of  Incorporation  with 
limited  liability.  The  change  of  opinion  which  made  this 
possible  was  due  to  the  ruin  which  unlimited  liability  had 
brought  upon  innocent  men.  At  the  period  of  the  collapse 
of  the  railway  boom  in  1845  many  such  men  liable  for  calls 
had  to  fly  the  country  and  to  live  abroad  for  many  years 
upon  what  remnants  of  their  property  they  could  manage 
to  save  from  the  wreck.  But  it  was  not  until  a  bank 
failure  in  Glasgow,  when  the  holder  of  a  small  share  was 
made  liable  for  a  thousand  times  its  amount,  that  public 


262  A  Guildsmari s  Interpretation  of  History 


opinion  was  roused.  The  Act  of  1855  which  first  acknow¬ 
ledged  the  principle  of  limited  liability  was  repealed  and 
replaced  by  one  in  1856,  which  served  in  many  respects 
as  a  model  for  the  Act  of  1862  which  forms  the  basis  of 
the  existing  code  of  Joint-Stock  Company  Law. 

Before  the  passing  of  these  Acts,  joint-stock  companies 
were  few  and  far  between,  but  once  the  principle  of  limited 
liability  was  admitted  in  law  they  rapidly  grew  in  numbers. 
They  have  invaded  every  branch  of  industry  with  the 
exception  of  agriculture,  though  as  these  pages  are  being 
written  I  read  of  the  coming  of  a  movement  for  applying 
limited  liability  company  methods  to  agriculture  and  an 
announcement  that  a  company  is  to  be  formed  to  exploit 
an  estate  of  19,000  acres  in  Lincolnshire,  the  purchase 
money  for  which  amounts  to  over  £2,000,000.  The  great 
boom  when  private  concerns  were  turned  into  limited 
companies  and  new  companies  promoted  came  in  the 
nineties,  when,  in  the  eight  years  from  1892  to  1899,  30,061 
new  companies  were  registered  in  the  United  Kingdom 
and  10,578  were  wound  up.  In  April,  1899,  there  were 
27,969  registered  joint-stock  companies  in  the  United 
Kingdom  with  a  share  capital,  having  an  aggregate  paid-up 
capital  of  £1,512,098,098.  In  April,  1914,  the  latest  return 
before  the  war  broke  upon  us,  the  number  of  companies 
had  increased  to  64,692  with  a  capital  of  £2,531,947,661. 
The  latest  return,  that  of  1916,  gives  the  number  of  com¬ 
panies  registered  as  66,094  with  a  capital  of  £2, 719, 989, 129. 1 
These  figures  are  all  the  more  striking  when  it  is  remembered 
that  they  do  not  include  most  of  our  great  railway,  gas, 
water,  canal  and  other  similar  companies  which  have 
private  Acts  of  Parliament  of  their  own. 

To  such  an  extent  have  limited  liability  companies 
got  a  grip  of  modern  business  that  it  is  impossible  to 
separate  the  two.  But  that  they  are  not  an  unmixed 
blessing,  from  whatever  point  of  view  examined,  no  one 
will  be  found  to  deny.  There  is  no  doubt  whatsoever  that 
they  have  been  the  main  factor  in  the  creation  of  that  flood 
of  commercial  dishonesty  and  legalized  fraud  which  in  these 

1  These  figures  are  taken  from  the  Board  of  Trade  (Inspector-General’s) 
Reports. 


On  Limited  Liability  Companies 


263 


days  carries  all  before  it.  Companies  have  been  formed 
simply  in  order  to  put  money  into  the  pockets  of  promoters, 
to  get  rid  of  declining  businesses  so  that  the  existing  owners 
may  withdraw  their  capital  to  invest  in  something  else 
while  leaving  the  shareholders  with  nothing  but  the  debts 
to  pay.  In  other  cases  companies  have  been  formed  in 
order  to  create  a  dummy  behind  which  some  sinister  figure 
might  move.  Such  abuses  are  admitted.  But  to  the 
business  man  of  to-day  these  disadvantages  are  more  than 
counterbalanced  by  the  advantages  they  are  supposed  to 
bring,  in  that  they  have  rendered  possible  an  enormous 
number  of  undertakings  which  from  the  amount  of  capital 
required  could  not  have  been  carried  out  by  an  individual 
capitalist  or  group  of  capitalists.  This  has  been  said  so 
often  that  people  are  inclined  to  accept  the  statement 
without  further  examination.  Yet  it  very  much  needs 
examination,  for  the  real  question  is  not  whether  it  has 
rendered  possible  undertakings  which  otherwise  could  not 
have  been  promoted,  but  whether  it  was  in  the  public 
interest  that  such  undertakings  should  be  entered  upon 
at  all ;  for  remember,  such  enterprises  as  those  of  railways, 
water,  gas,  etc.,  rest  on  private  Acts  of  Parliament  and  are 
not  to  be  confused  with  the  general  issue  of  limited  liability. 

Now  it  will  clear  the  issue  if  we  begin  with  the  opinion 
of  Adam  Smith,  who  in  the  Wealth  of  Nations  probably 
expressed  the  current  view  on  the  subject  of  joint-stock 
companies  when  he  said  that  the  only  trades  a  joint-stock 
company  not  having  a  monopoly  can  carry  on  successfully 
are  those  in  which  all  the  operations  are  capable  of  being 
reduced  to  routine  or  of  such  a  uniformity  of  method  as 
admits  of  little  or  no  variation.  Only  four  trades,  in  his 
opinion,  answer  the  test  of  suitability  which  he  thus  laid 
down,  namely,  those  of  banking,  of  fire  and  marine  insur¬ 
ance,  of  making  and  maintaining  canals,  and  of  water  supply. 
Railways,  tramways,  gas  and  electric  supply  he  would 
doubtless  have  added  as  belonging  to  the  same  category 
if  such  things  had  existed  in  his  time.  Manufacturing  by 
a  joint-stock  company,  he  considers,  would  not  only  be 
unsuccessful  as  a  business,  but  would  be  injurious  to  the 
public  welfare 


264  A  Guildsman’s  Interpretation  of  History 


Now  the  question  comes,  Was  Adam  Smith  right  ? 
Has  modern  experience  controverted  him  or  are  appear¬ 
ances  only  against  him  ?  I  do  not  hesitate  to  say  that 
he  was  absolutely  right  when  he  said  that  manufacturing 
by  joint-stock  companies  would  be  injurious  to  the  public 
interest,  but  experience  has  proved  him  to  be  wrong  when  he 
said  they  would  be  unsuccessful.  If  success  for  them  depended 
upon  efficiency  as  producers,  they  would  certainly  fail.  But 
success  for  limited  liability  companies  does  not  depend  upon 
any  such  efficiency  but  upon  an  ability  to  corner  the  market 
in  some  way.  The  usual  ways  are  either  to  use  their  great 
capital  for  keeping  others  out  by  advertising  ;  by  manipu¬ 
lating  prices  in  such  a  way  that  a  market  is  secured  for 
certain  things  at  very  enhanced  prices  while  underselling 
small  men  in  others,  thus  preventing  any  one  from  competing 
with  them  who  is  not  on  a  similar  scale  of  business  ;  or 
by  securing  a  tied  market  by  judiciously  distributing  shares 
among  those  who  can  be  of  service  to  the  company  in 
recommending  business.  Each  of  these  methods  is  cor¬ 
rupting.  I  will  not  enlarge  on  the  evils  attendant  upon 
advertising  and  manipulated  prices,1  since  both  of  these 
illegitimate  methods  of  trade  were  pursued  by  private  firms 
before  limited  companies  held  the  held,  but  will  dwell  upon 
the  third  of  these  methods,  because  it  is  the  one  thing, 
apart  from  its  ease  in  getting  hold  of  capital,  that  gives 
the  limited  company  an  illegitimate  advantage  over  the 
private  firm,  while  it  is  the  most  corrupting  of  its  corrupting 
influences. 

By  distributing  shares  among  those  who  can  be  of 
service  to  it,  the  limited  company  corrupts  the  public  by 
obtaining  business  in  an  illicit  way  while  at  the  same  time 
it  closes  the  market  to  new  men.  Henceforward  the  com¬ 
petent  man  who  would  set  up  in  business  is  unable  to  do 
so  because  the  market  is  rigged  against  him.  It  is  no  longer 
possible  for  a  man,  however  competent  he  may  be,  to 
come  to  any  position  in  industry  apart  from  the  favour  of 
those  already  established,  except  he  be  possessed  of  large 
capital  or  great  influence,  as  the  case  might  be,  such  as 

1  The  evil  of  manipulated  prices  is  examined  in  my  Old  Worlds  for  New, 
chap.  xiv. 


On  Limited  Liability  Companies 


265 


would  enable  him  to  weather  the  storm  and  difficulties  of 
getting  established.  These  circumstances  immediately  pro¬ 
duced  a  change  in  the  psychology  of  industry.  Hitherto, 
success  had  come  to  the  man  of  grit  and  competence.  Such 
qualities  were  the  ones  that  made  for  success  under  the 
system  of  competition.  But  men  soon  found  that  so  far 
from  such  qualities  being  an  asset  to  them  under  a  system 
of  limited  liability  companies,  they  were  a  positive  hindrance  ; 
for  success  came  not  to  men  of  an  independent  spirit,  but 
to  men  whose  temperament  was  characterized  by  flexibility 
and  subservience,  or,  in  other  words,  the  qualities  of  master¬ 
ship  which  told  to  advantage  in  the  open  market  when 
combined,  it  should  be  added,  with  some  commercial  instinct 
were  no  longer  in  demand  under  a  system  of  large  organ¬ 
izations  and  limited  companies  ;  the  demand  being  entirely 
for  men  of  secondary  talents,  not  for  men  of  initiative,  but 
for  men  of  routine.  Hence  talent  was  discouraged  and 
mediocrity  preferred.  This  tendency  has  gathered  strength 
ever  since  limited  companies  came  to  dominate  the  situation. 
It  has  been  well  defined  as  “  the  principle  of  inverted 
selection.”  Its  application  guaranteed  company  directors  a 
temporary  tranquillity,  but  has  so  completely  undermined 
the  morale  of  industry  as  to  leave  them  entirely  without 
reliable  counsellors  when  industry  is  required  to  adjust 
itself  to  a  new  situation,  as  the  present  crisis  bears  witness. 

The  reason  for  these  changed  circumstances  is  easy 
to  understand.  They  came  about  because  the  joint-stock 
principle  in  placing  the  final  authority  in  shareholders 
places  it  in  the  hands  of  amateurs.  Amateurs,  however, 
are  never  allowed  to  see  things  as  they  really  are,  but  only 
what  it  is  convenient  for  others  to  let  them  see.  Hence 
there  is  a  tendency  for  reality  and  appearances  to  drift 
ever  farther  apart.  A  man  has  not  to  work  long  inside 
of  a  large  organization  before  he  discovers  that  doing  good 
work  and  securing  promotion  are  two  entirely  separate 
and  distinct  propositions,  and  that  so  far  from  good  work 
(except  of  the  routine  kind)  helping  him,  it  may  actually 
stand  in  his  way  by  bringing  him  into  collision  with  others 
who  have  a  vested  interest  in  things  remaining  as  they 
are,  and  who  therefore  will  do  everything  to  defeat  the  ends 


266  A  Guildsman’s  Interpretation  of  History 


of  the  innovator.  Promotion,  on  the  contrary,  goes  with 
being  a  “  good  fellow  ”  ;  with  toadying  to  men  in  position  ; 
with  maintaining  an  appearance  of  doing  things  but  not  with 
actually  doing  them,  since  that  is  much  more  likely  to  lead 
to  trouble  ;  with  managing  things  in  such  a  way  as  to  secure 
the  credit  for  things  that  are  successful  for  oneself  and  to 
shuffle  off  responsibility  for  failure  on  to  the  shoulders  of 
others.  This  is  not  difficult  in  large  organizations,  for  it 
is  generally  impossible  for  any  except  those  inside  to  know 
exactly  for  what  work  any  particular  individual  is  responsible. 
There  are,  of  course,  exceptions  to  this  rule,  but  then  there 
are  exceptional  circumstances,  and  an  institution  is  to  be 
judged  by  its  norm  and  not  by  its  exceptions.  No  one 
can  deny  that  in  large  organizations  success  goes  to  the 
bounder,  to  the  man  who  studies  the  game  rather  than 
the  work.  Certain  of  these  evils  arise  from  the  mere  size 
of  such  organizations,  which  by  making  every  individual 
dependent  on  his  immediate  superior  tends  to  give  priority 
to  personal  considerations.  These  evils  would  probably 
develop,  however  wise  the  heads  might  be,  but  they  are 
increased  a  hundredfold  by  the  fact  that  in  all  such  organ¬ 
izations,  whether  they  be  limited  liability  companies  or 
Government  departments,  control  is  from  without  and 
authority  rests  finally  in  the  hands  of  amateurs. 

Certain  consequences  follow  from  such  an  abnormal 
condition  of  affairs.  Finance  having  set  out  to  exploit 
the  producer,  finds  itself  nowadays  in  turn  exploited  by 
sharks  who  prey  upon  the  amateurs.  These  are  the  clever 
men  who  take  the  world  as  they  find  it.  Realizing  the 
stupidity  of  the  men  in  control,  they  play  upon  their  vanity 
and  carefully  lay  traps  into  which  they  may  fall.  In 
exploiting  the  exploiters  they  afford  a  certain  amount  of 
amusement  for  the  exploited,  while  they  perform  a  useful 
function  in  bringing  not  only  the  commercial  but  our  legal 
system  into  discredit,  for  it  so  happens  that  they  are  able 
to  pursue  their  vocation  because  they  are  masters  of  the 
law. 

While  on  the  one  hand  limited  companies  have  given 
rise  to  all  manner  of  legalized  fraud,  on  the  other  hand 
they  have  created  widespread  disaffection  among  the 


On  Limited  Liability  Companies 


267 


workers.  The  mass  of  men  nowadays  do  not  want  to  do 
any  work,  because  they  feel  that  not  they  but  others  are 
going  to  profit  by  their  labour.  So  long  as  competence 
was  rewarded  and  honour  appreciated  there  was  an  incentive 
for  men  to  work.  If  they  became  efficient  they  might 
get  on  to  their  own  feet,  and  the  presence  of  a  number  of 
men  with  such  ambitions  in  industry  gave  a  certain  moral 
tone  to  it  that  reacted  upon  others.  But  when,  owing 
to  the  spread  of  limited  companies,  all  such  hopes 
were  definitely  removed  and  the  invention  of  automatic 
machinery  rendered  work  entirely  monotonous,  when  tech¬ 
nical  ability,  however  great,  went  unrecognized  and  un¬ 
rewarded,  and  proficiency  in  any  department  of  industry 
incurred  the  jealousy  of  “  duds  ”  in  high  places,  demoral¬ 
ization  set  in.  All  the  old  incentives  were  gone,  and  no  one 
was  left  to  set  a  standard.  The  subconscious  instincts  of 
men  whose  ambitions  were  thwarted  turned  into  purely 
destructive  channels.  Already  before  the  war  things  had 
taken  this  turn,  but  the  wave  of  patriotism  to  which  the 
war  gave  rise  led  to  hopes  that  a  new  spirit  was  to  enter 
industry.  But  when,  through  the  rapacity  of  profiteers,  it 
became  apparent  that  such  hopes  were  doomed  to  dis¬ 
appointment,  destructive  impulses  returned  with  redoubled 
energy.  That  is  the  secret  of  the  labour  unrest.  The 
profiteers  have  killed  the  goose  that  laid  the  golden  eggs. 

It  was  because  limited  companies  sought  from  the  first 
to  secure  their  position  by  cornering  the  market  rather 
than  by  a  regard  for  their  own  internal  efficiency,  that 
they  have  for  ever  been  seeking  to  establish  themselves 
on  a  larger  and  larger  scale.  Consideration  of  internal 
efficiency  would  have  urged  upon  them  the  advantages 
of  small  organizations,  which  in  the  nature  of  things  are 
more  manageable,  but  the  policy  to  which  they  were  com¬ 
mitted  of  maintaining  themselves  by  securing  monopolies 
of  the  market  obliged  them  to  seek  to  operate  on  an  in¬ 
creasingly  larger  scale  in  order  that  they  could  more  success¬ 
fully  hold  their  own  against  competing  companies.  But 
the  larger  the  scale  they  operate  upon,  the  greater  becomes 
their  need  of  capital ;  and  the  greater  their  need,  the  more 
they  tended  to  fall  under  the  control  of  the  banks  which 


268  A  Guildsmaris  Interpretation  of  History 


monopolized  credit.  Major  C.  H.  Douglas  has  given  to 
this  new  development  which  has  supplanted  capitalism 
the  name  of  Creditism.1  Capitalism  was  essentially  private 
and  individual,  and  because  of  its  private  and  individual 
nature  a  natural  boundary  was  placed  to  the  dimensions 
of  an  organization.  But  when  in  order  to  be  successful 
business  had  to  be  started  on  a  big  scale,  the  possibility  of 
the  individual  capitalist  starting  any  new  enterprise  became 
dependent  in  the  vast  majority  of  cases  upon  being  able 
to  get  the  backing  of  some  bank.  Hence  it  has  come  about 
that  while  it  is  an  easy  matter  for  a  company  already  estab¬ 
lished  to  secure  additional  capital  to  extend  its  business 
operations,  it  has  become  almost  impossible  for  a  new  man 
to  start  ;  for  a  new  man  is  an  unknown  quantity  and  is 
not  to  be  trusted  with  extensive  credit.  It  has  been  thus 
that  the  arrival  of  limited  companies  has  been  followed 
by  a  centripetal  movement  in  finance  which  encourages 
the  organization  of  larger  and  larger  concerns,  not  because 
of  the  needs  of  efficiency,  but  because  of  the  exigencies 
of  credit,  which  in  turn  still  further  widens  the  discrepancy 
between  appearances  and  reality,  between  control  and 
potential  ability. 

In  Germany  the  attempt  was  made  to  counteract  this 
centripetal  tendency  of  finance  by  the  institution  of  credit 
banks,  which  it  was  hoped  would  restore  a  distributed 
initiative  by  inducing  a  centrifugal  tendency.  It  was  a 
proverbial  saying  in  Germany  that  with  the  aid  of  his 
bank  a  man  builds  the  first  floor  of  his  house  by  mortgaging 
the  ground  floor  ;  his  second  by  mortgaging  the  first  ;  and 
puts  on  the  roof  by  the  aid  of  a  mortgage  upon  his  second 
floor.  This  is  no  exaggeration,  for  the  banks  were  accus¬ 
tomed  to  advance  money  to  the  extent  of  90  per  cent, 
to  men  who  desired  to  set  up  in  business,  on  a  purely 
speculative  goodwill,  and  to  accept  as  security  for  the 
remaining  10  per  cent,  a  valuation  of  such  things  as  house¬ 
hold  furniture.  But  it  all  availed  nothing.  The  wide¬ 
spread  distribution  of  credit  increased  the  efficiency  of  the 
industrial  machine  to  such  an  extent  that  in  fifteen  years 
Germany  quadrupled  her  output,  and  this  led  to  such  an 

1  Economic  Democracy,  by  C.  H.  Douglas  ( New  Age,  1919). 


On  Limited  Liability  Companies 


269 


intensification  of  the  pace  of  competition  and  profits  were 
so  reduced  that  in  the  years  before  the  war  the  great  mass 
of  German  industries  were  rapidly  approaching  bankruptcy. 
The  stress  of  such  circumstances  doubtless  precipitated 
the  war.  I  have  little  doubt  that  England  owed  her  com¬ 
parative  immunity  from  such  trying  conditions  to  her 
comparative  inefficiency. 

The  failure  of  limited  liability  companies  as  a  system 
of  industrial  control  suggests  a  comparison  with  the 
Mediaeval  Guild  system  ;  for  the  difference  between  them 
is  the  difference  between  the  Mediaeval  and  modern  worlds. 
Under  the  modern  system  finance  plays  the  all-important 
part.  It  comes  first  and  every  other  consideration  plays 
a  quite  secondary  and  unimportant  part.  As  the  system 
develops,  technical  skill  is  less  and  less  appreciated,  and 
what  naturally  follows  from  it  sinks  into  a  lower  and  lower 
status.  On  this  side  limited  companies  are  living  on  capital. 
Their  influence  tends  to  undermine  all  such  skill,  and  as 
the  final  test  of  an  organization  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  public  is  not  the  profits  it  makes  but  what  kind  of  goods 
it  produces,  the  limited  liability  system  of  control  from 
without  stands  condemned  as  the  worst  system  under 
which  industry  has  ever  been  organized.  The  Mediaeval 
Guild  system  was  the  exact  reverse  of  this.  The  technical 
man  or  craftsman,  who  under  the  limited  liability  company 
system  is  reckoned  a  man  of  no  account,  was  in  control 
and  he  arranged  things  very  differently.  Instead  of  organ¬ 
izing  industry  for  the  purpose  of  extracting  profits,  he 
organized  it  with  the  aim  of  producing  good  work.  With 
this  aim  in  view  finance  was  reduced  to  the  bare  minimum 
by  the  simple  device  of  fixing  prices.  In  large  building 
works  a  bookkeeper  was  employed,  but  apart  from  this 
finance  appears  to  have  been  entirely  absent  in  production. 
The  financial  man  confined  his  attention  entirely  to  dis¬ 
tribution,  and  distribution  in  those  days  was  a  very  secondary 
form  of  activity.  It  did  not  bulk  in  anything  like  the 
proportion  it  does  to-day.  The  change  which  has  taken 
the  control  of  industry  out  of  the  hands  of  the  technical 
man  and  allowed  the  financier  to  spread  his  tentacles  over 
it  is  due  finally  to  the  revival  of  Roman  Law,  which  broke 


270  A  Guildsman’s  Interpretation  of  History 


down  barrier  after  barrier  that  placed  a  boundary  to 
financial  operations.  It  began  by  transforming  the  Feudal 
system,  based  upon  the  principle  of  function,  into  land¬ 
lordism.  This  enabled  capitalism  to  get  a  foothold  in 
rural  areas,  to  develop  domestic  industry  and  undermine 
the  position  of  the  Guilds.  But  the  two  things  that  made 
the  great  change  were,  first,  the  Industrial  Revolution,  which 
undermined  the  position  of  the  craftsman  and  gave  great 
opportunities  to  the  financier,  and  second,  the  legalization  of 
limited  liability,  which  handed  over  technical  trades  entirely 
to  commercial  exploitation  by  divorcing  ownership  from 
control  and  technical  ability. 


CHAPTER  XIX 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  AFTERMATH 


“Commercial  intercourse  between  nations,  it  was  supposed  some  fifty  years 
ago,  would  inaugurate  an  era  of  peace  ;  and  there  appear  to  be  many  among 
you  who  still  cling  to  this  belief.  But  never  was  belief  more  plainly  contra¬ 
dicted  by  the  facts.  The  competition  for  markets  bids  fair  to  be  a  more 
fruitful  cause  of  war  than  was  ever  in  the  past  the  ambition  of  princes  or  the 
bigotry  of  priests.  The  peoples  of  Europe  fling  themselves,  like  hungry 
beasts  of  prey,  on  every  yet  unexploited  quarter  of  the  globe.  Hitherto  they 
have  confined  their  acts  of  spoliation  to  those  whom  they  regard  as  out¬ 
side  their  own  pale.  But  always,  while  they  divide  the  spoil,  they  watch 
one  another  with  a  jealous  eye  ;  and  sooner  or  later,  when  there  is  nothing 
left  to  divide,  they  will  fall  upon  one  another.  That  is  the  real  meaning  of 
your  armaments  ;  you  must  devour  or  be  devoured.  And  it  is  precisely  those 
trade  relations,  which  it  was  thought  would  knit  you  in  the  bonds  of  peace, 
which,  by  making  every  one  of  you  cut-throat  rivals  of  the  rest,  have  brought 
you  within  reasonable  distance  of  a  general  war  of  extermination  "  ( Letters 
from  John  Chinaman,  by  G.  Lowes  Dickinson). 


In  August,  1914,  this  prophecy,  made  some  twenty  years 
ago,  was  fulfilled.  The  German  army  entered  Belgium, 
and  the  long-predicted  war  broke  over  Europe.  Until  the 
day  of  its  arrival  large  numbers  of  people  in  this  country 
were  sceptical  as  to  the  reality  of  the  menace.  They 
had  been  warned  too  often  to  believe  it.  Certain  definite 
actions  certainly  pointed  to  the  coming  of  war.  But  on 
the  other  hand  certain  general  considerations  weighed 
heavily  against  it.  The  industrial  system  was  a  highly 
complex  affair.  It  could  only  be  maintained  by  a  high 
degree  of  reciprocity  between  the  nations.  In  consequence 
a  European  war  between  nations  who  had  adopted  con¬ 
scription  would  be  a  life-and-death  struggle  which  would 
probably  end  in  the  destruction  of  modern  civilization — in  a 
catastrophe  in  which  The  victorious  as  well  as  the  van¬ 
quished  would  be  involved.  It  was  difficult  to  believe 
that  Germany  would  be  oblivious  to  this  fact.  There 

271 


272  A  Gnildsmari’s  Interpretation  of  History 


might  be  Jingoes  bent  on  war  in  Germany,  bnt  then  there 
were  Jingoes  in  England,  and  it  did  not  necessarily  follow 
that  they  would  get  their  own  way.  What  reason  was 
there  to  suppose  that  difficulties  could  not  be  arranged  by 
compromise  and  moderate  opinion  prevail  ? 

In  some  such  way  as  this  the  mass  of  moderately  minded 
people  reasoned  before  the  war.  That  they  so  entirely 
misjudged  the  situation  is  perhaps  finally  to  be  accounted 
for  by  the  fact  that  its  true  inwardness  was  never  written 
about  until  after  the  war  had  broken  out.  We  were  told 
about  the  vast  preparations  that  Germany  was  making 
for  war  ;  about  the  growth  of  armaments  in  which  other 
European  nations  followed  suit.  But  we  were  never  told 
why  Germany  was  making  such  preparations.  She  had 
nothing  to  fear  from  France — La  revanche  was  dead — 
nor  had  she  anything  to  fear  from  England.  Why 
was  she  arming  ?  This  at  the  time  was  an  enigma  to 
thinking  people  who  were  not  carried  off  their  feet  by 
chauvinism.  The  trade  of  Germany  was  advancing  by 
leaps  and  bounds.  To  all  appearances  her  prosperity  was 
increasing.  Why  then  did  she  exhibit  this  querulous 
spirit  ?  No  satisfactory  answer  was  forthcoming.  Per¬ 
haps  after  all  it  was  only  bluff  intended  to  further  the 
ends  of  her  diplomacy.  The  hazards  of  a  general  European 
war  were  so  incalculable  that  it  was  to  be  supposed  that 
even  Germany  would  not  lightly  embark  upon  such  an 
enterprise. 

And  indeed  it  is  true  to  say  that  Germany  did  not  embark 
lightly  on  war.  That  she  did  eventually  declare  war  was 
due  to  the  fact  that  her  position  had  become  desperate, 
and  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  a  consciousness  that  it 
was  only  a  matter  of  time  before  such  a  situation  would 
arise  was  the  motive  that  all  along  prompted  her  to  arm. 
The  exhaustion  of  markets,  foreseen  by  all  who  ever  reflected 
on  the  trend  of  industrialism,  had  come  about  at  last,  and 
Germany  was  finding  herself  in  difficulties.  The  growth  of 
the  pressure  of  competition  had  indicated  for  some  time 
that  other  industrialized  nations  were  beginning  to  feel 
the  pinch.  But  they  had  greater  reserves,  and  their  posi¬ 
tion  was  far  from  desperate.  England,  for  example,  had  a 


The  War  and  the  Aftermath 


273 


great  reserve  of  wealth  in  raw  materials  and  colonies  which 
provided  an  outlet  for  surplus  population  and  a  market  for 
surplus  goods.  Moreover,  there  was  India,  which  provided 
not  only  a  market  for  goods,  but  posts  for  civil  servants. 
But  Germany  was  not  so  fortunately  placed.  She  was 
poor  in  raw  materials  and  had  no  first-class  colonies  and 
no  dependencies.  So  it  came  about  that  Germany  became 
accustomed  to  compare  her  own  position  with  the  more 
favourable  position  of  England,  and  to  imagine  that  if 
only  she  had  colonies  and  dependencies  her  economic  con¬ 
dition  would  be  different  ;  the  pressure  of  competition 
would  be  relieved  and  her  people  would  be  in  a  position  to 
pursue  their  aims  unaccompanied  by  those  financial  worries 
which  since  the  opening  of  the  present  century  had  been 
a  constant  source  of  anxiety.  This  feeling  was  shared 
by  the  whole  nation,  from  capitalists  who  were  eager  for 
concessions  to  the  students  of  the  universities.  “  Any  one,” 
says  Mr.  de  Maeztu,  “  who  has  lived  in  German  university 
circles  during  the  last  few  years  will  be  able  to  confirm 
my  statement,  that  the  greatest  enthusiasts  of  colonial 
expansion  in  Germany  were  not  the  manufacturers,  but 
the  students.  Their  admiration  and  envy  of  British  power 
in  India  were  not  aroused  by  commercial  prospects,  but  by 
the  possibility  of  posts  for  military  and  civil  bureaucrats. 
In  the  future  colonial  empire  of  Germany  the  student  dimly 
discerned  billets  and  pensions  for  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  German  university  graduates.”  1  It  was  the  vision 
of  such  prospects  that  induced  them  to  favour  a  policy  of 
aggression. 

The  part  played  by  bureaucracies  in  fomenting  racial 
and  international  troubles  should  not  be  overlooked.  The 
desire  of  their  bureaucracies  for  expansion  was  the  one 
bond  of  common  interest  between  Germany  and  Austria, 
offering  us  some  clue  as  to  why  the  Austrian  declaration 
of  war  on  Serbia  was  so  popular  in  Vienna.  Writing  of 
the  Austrian  bureaucracy  before  the  war,  Mr.  Wickham 
Steed  says  “  the  ‘  race  struggle  '  in  Austria,  of  which  so 
much  has  been  written,  is  largely  a  struggle  for  bureau¬ 
cratic  appointments.  Germans  and  Czechs  have  striven  for 

1  Authority,  Liberty  and  Function,  by  Raniro  de  Maeztu,  p.  99. 

18 


274  A  Guildsmaris  Interpretation  of  History 


years  to  increase  on  the  one  hand  and  defend  on  the  other 
their  patrimony  of  official  positions.  The  essence  of  the 
language  struggle  is  that  it  is  a  struggle  for  bureaucratic 
influence.  Similarly,  the  demand  for  new  Universities 
or  High  Schools  put  forward  by  Czechs,  Ruthenes,  Slovenes 
and  Italians  but  resisted  by  the  Germans,  Poles  and  other 
nations,  as  the  case  may  be,  are  demands  for  the  creation 
of  new  machines  to  turn  out  potential  officials  whom  the 
political  influence  of  Parliamentary  parties  may  then  be 
trusted  to  hoist  into  bureaucratic  appointments.  In  the 
Austrian  Parliament  the  Government,  which  consists  mainly 
of  officials,  sometimes  purchases  the  support  of  political 
leaders  by  giving  State  appointments  to  their  kindred  or 
proteges ,  or  by  promoting  proteges  already  appointed.  One 
hand  washes  the  other,  and  service  is  rendered  for  service. 
On  occasion  the  votes  of  a  whole  party  can  be  bought  by 
the  appointment  of  one  of  its  prominent  members  to  a 
permanent  Under-Secretaryship  in  a  Department  of  State. 
Once  appointed,  he  is  able  to  facilitate  the  appointment  of 
other  officials  of  his  own  race  or  party.  Each  position 
thus  conquered  forms  part  of  the  political  patrimony  of 
the  race  and  party  by  whom  it  has  been  secured,  and  is 
stoutly  defended  against  attack.  Appointments  are  thus 
multiplied  exceedingly — to  the  cost  of  the  taxpayer  and 
the  complication  of  public  business/ ’  1 

Of  course  this  kind  of  thing  has  its  limits.  A  point  is 
reached  when  the  burden  of  officials  becomes  so  great  to 
the  taxpayer  and  so  inimical  to  the  commercial  interest 
of  a  country  that  the  desire  for  further  expansion  on  the 
part  of  a  bureaucracy  can  only  be  satisfied  by  extending 
their  powers  over  the  inhabitants  of  other  countries,  and 
it  must  be  understood  that  the  desire  for  expansion  is  in¬ 
herent  in  bureaucracies,  for  expansion  provides  opportuni¬ 
ties  for  promotion.  In  a  stationary  bureaucracy  promotion 
is  slow — a  matter  of  waiting  for  dead  men’s  shoes.  “  For 
other  classes  the  national  idea  of  a  sovereign  State  is  a  dis¬ 
interested,  sentimental,  and  romantic  ideal.  For  the  officials, 

1  The  Hapsburg  Monarchy,  by  H.  Wickham  Steed,  pp.  77-8.  I  need 
scarcely  remind  my  readers  that  bureaucracies  are  the  consequence  of  the 
ideal  of  the  centralized  state  of  Roman  Law. 


The  War  and  the  Aftermath 


275 


on  the  other  hand,  the  State  is  not  only  an  ideal  but  a 
source  of  income.  It  has  been  said — by  Mr.  Norman  Angell, 
I  believe — that  when  the  Germans  annexed  Alsace-Lorraine 
the  rich  of  Alsace-Lorraine  went  on  being  rich,  the  poor 
continued  to  be  poor,  labourers  were  still  labourers,  and 
that  the  war  had  been  useless  from  an  economic  point  of 
view.  And  it  is  quite  possible  that  war  may  be  useless  from 
the  point  of  view  of  labourers,  workmen  and  masters.  But 
the  two  thousand  French  professors  in  both  provinces  were 
replaced  by  two  thousand  Germans  ;  and  the  same  thing 
happened  with  the  army  officers,  the  judges,  the  officials 
of  the  public  health  boards,  and  so  on.  From  the  point 
of  view  of  the  bureaucratic  interests  the  war  was  not  merely 
useless,  but  positively  disastrous  for  French  officialdom 
and  beneficial  to  the  German.  A  change  of  flag  may  not 
substantially  alter  the  economic  regime  of  a  specified  dis¬ 
trict  ;  but  what  does  undoubtedly  change  is  the  bureau¬ 
cratic  personnel.  The  official  follows  the  flag.  The  official 
is  therefore  the  permanent  soldier  of  the  flag.”  1 

Though  bureaucracies  have  an  immediate  interest  in 
wars  of  conquest,  they  are  yet  not  sufficiently  powerful 
to  make  wars  on  their  own  account.  Before  a  war  can 
be  successfully  launched  the  nation  as  a  whole  must  be 
brought  into  line.  The  terrible  financial  strain  to  which 
Germany  had  been  subjected  in  the  two  or  three  years 
preceding  the  war  had  induced  a  frame  of  mind  favourable 
to  the  war  party,  and  it  is  conceivable  that  the  war  was  as 
much  caused  by  the  desire  for  relief  from  such  trying  cir¬ 
cumstances  as  by  the  warlike  proclivities  of  the  German 
ruling  class.  Germany  was  committed  to  a  policy  of  in¬ 
definite  industrial  expansion,  and  signs  were  not  wanting 
that  expansion  had  reached  its  limit,  for  the  enormous 
competition  in  the  production  of  goods  had  reduced  profits 
to  such  an  extent  that  it  became  evident  that  the  German 
financial  system,  built  upon  an  inverted  pyramid  of  credit, 
could  not  for  long  bear  the  strain  of  such  adverse  conditions. 
So  long  as  peace  continued  there  was  no  hope  of  relief, 
for  the  ratio  of  production  due  to  never  slackening  energy, 
technique  and  scientific  development  was  outstripping  the 

1  Maeztu,  p.  93. 


276  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


ratio  of  demand.  “  In  the  fifteen  years  before  the  war 
Germany  had  quadrupled  her  output,  and  in  consequence 
a  day  came  when  all  the  world  that  would  take  German- 
made  goods  was  choked  to  the  lips.  Economic  difficulties 
began  to  make  themselves  felt,  and  then  the  Prussian 
doctrine  of  force  spread  with  alarming  rapidity.  War  was 
decided  upon  for  the  purpose  of  relieving  the  pressure  of 
competition  by  forcing  goods  upon  other  markets.”  1  Hence 
the  demand  for  colonial  expansion,  the  destruction  of  the 
towns  and  industries  of  Belgium  and  Northern  France  and 
the  wholesale  destruction  of  shipping  by  the  submarine 
campaign.  They  had  all  one  object  in  view — to  relieve 
the  pressure  of  competition,  to  get  more  elbow-room  for 
German  industries.  The  idea  of  relieving  the  pressure  of 
competition  by  such  commercial  sabotage  was  not  a  new 
one.  It  had  been,  as  I  have  pointed  out,  employed  by  the 
Romans,  who  destroyed  Carthage  and  the  vineyards  and 
olive-groves  of  Gaul  in  order  to  avoid  a  damaging  com¬ 
petition,  but  it  was  a  crazy  one  all  the  same,  for  it 
embarked  Germany  upon  a  policy  from  which  there  was 
no  turning  back,  and  left  her  no  option  but  to  conquer 
the  world  or  be  annihilated  in  case  of  failure.  There 
was  no  third  alternative,  for  such  action  removed  the 
possibility  of  a  peace  by  compromise. 

It  was  finally  because  every  other  nation  in  Western 
Europe  and  America  was  moving  into  a  similar  cul-de-sac 
that  the  desperate  remedy  sought  by  Germany  was  no 
remedy  at  all.  The  reason  why  all  were  beginning  to  find 
themselves  in  difficulties  was  because  each  of  them  had 
embarked  upon  a  policy  of  indefinite  economic  expansion 
on  a  basis  of  economic  injustice.  Each  of  them  had  denied 
economic  justice  to  the  workers  and  Nemesis  was  over¬ 
taking  them  all.  It  is  only  necessary  to  reflect  on  the 
general  economic  situation  to  realize  this.  Greed  had 
blinded  them  all  to  the  simple  economic  fact  that  it  is 
impossible  in  the  long  run  to  increase  production  except 
on  the  assumption  that  consumption  be  correspondingly 
increased.  Such  an  increase  of  consumption,  it  is  apparent, 
could  only  be  permanently  secured  on  an  assumption  that  the 
1  The  Coming  Trade  War,  by  Thomas  Farrow  and  Walter  Crotch. 


The  W ar  and  the  Aftermath 


277 


workers  were  allowed  to  have  a  proportionate  share  of  the 
increased  wealth  which  they  assisted  to  produce.  But  the 
policy  of  capitalists  all  over  the  world  being  to  secure  all 
the  advantages  of  increased  production  for  themselves,  had 
created  great  inequalities  of  wealth,  and  so  it  came  about 
that  as  the  people  only  earned  a  bare  subsistence  an  increased 
productivity  could  only  be  disposed  of  finally  in  two  ways  : 
by  the  increase  of  luxuries  for  the  wealthy  on  the  one  hand — 
for  the  increase  of  consumption  had  to  come  entirely  from 
the  rich — or  by  disposing  of  surplus  goods  in  foreign  markets. 
But  such  a  policy  had  well-defined  limits.  No  nation 
could  afford  to  be  the  consumer  of  machine-produced  goods 
indefinitely,  as  in  that  case  the  suction  would  drain  its 
economic  resources,  and  so  one  nation  after  another  was 
drawn  into  the  whirlpool  of  industrial  production,  until 
a  time  came  at  last  when  there  were  no  new  markets  left 
to  exploit.  When  that  point  was  reached,  the  fundamental 
falsity  of  the  whole  system  revealed  itself  in  the  economic 
paradox  that  drove  Germany  into  war. 

The  declaration  of  war  gave  the  German  economic  system 
a  new  lease  of  life  by  the  enormous  demand  it  created  for 
munitions,  which  were  sold  to  the  Government  at  prices 
which  enabled  loans  and  other  financial  obligations  to  be 
met.  The  money  for  the  payment  of  these  munitions  was 
raised  by  loans  which  it  was  the  intention  of  the  German 
Government  to  liquidate  by  means  of  the  huge  indemnities 
which  they  hoped  to  get  from  the  Entente.  As  a  measure 
of  temporary  economic  expediency  the  war  for  Germany 
doubtless  served  its  immediate  purpose  of  setting  the  financial 
machine  in  motion  again,  but  even  if  Germany  had  been 
successful  it  could  not  have  solved  her  economic  problem 
when  peace  returned,  because  a  policy  of  indefinite  industrial 
expansion,  by  producing  goods  in  greater  quantities  than 
the  market  could  absorb,  was  bound  before  long  to  land 
her  in  the  same  position  in  which  she  found  herself  in  1914. 
In  the  event  of  her  being  victorious,  the  most  optimistic 
forecast  of  her  future  would  place  her  in  the  same  position 
as  England  finds  herself  in  to-day,  which  is  anything  but 
rosy. 

The  outbreak  of  war  caught  England  unprepared, 


278  A  Guildsmarts  Interpretation  of  History 


and  seriously  dislocated  the  old  economic  order.  Accus¬ 
tomed  supplies  vanished  and  exceptional  demands  immedi¬ 
ately  sprang  up.  Into  a  market  of  producers  competing 
with  each  other  for  a  still  greater  number  of  consumers, 
which  had  kept  prices  comparatively  stationary,  though 
the  tendency  for  prices  to  rise  had  been  continuous  for 
the  twenty  previous  years,  there  came  an  enormous  demand 
for  war  material  of  one  kind  and  another,  and  for  this  there 
was  only  one  buyer — the  Government,  acting  at  first  through 
the  War  Office  and  later  through  it  and  the  Ministry  of 
Munitions  and  other  Government  departments.  In  the 
first  few  months  of  the  war  a  wave  of  patriotism  passed 
over  the  country  which  apparently  was  so  genuine  that 
it  led  the  Yorkshire  woollen  manufacturers  to  offer  to 
supply  the  Government  with  khaki  at  a  fixed  price,  but  this 
offer,  which  would  probably  have  been  followed  by  other 
manufacturers,  was  refused  by  the  War  Office,  who  preferred 
to  continue  the  system  of  competitive  contracts.  The 
result  was  disastrous,  for  it  so  happened  that  the  needs  of 
the  Government  were  soon  to  become  so  great  that  the 
large  firms  found  themselves  in  a  position  to  hold  up  the 
State  for  ransom,  and  as  the  patriotic  offer  of  the  York¬ 
shire  manufacturers  had  been  refused,  they  did  not  scruple 
to  take  the  fullest  advantage  of  the  situation.  The  un¬ 
employed  problem  to  which  the  war  immediately  gave  rise 
did  not  last  for  long,  but  was  speedily  followed  by  a  great 
demand  for  labour  which  in  turn  was  followed  by  a  rise  in 
wages,  and  from  then  onwards  prices  and  wages  engaged  in  a 
neck-and-neck  race.  Meanwhile,  in  one  way  or  another,  the 
vast  majority  of  people,  either  directly  or  indirectly,  were 
working  in  the  public  service,  and  all  this  enormous  arti¬ 
ficial  activity  was  kept  in  motion  and  stimulated  from 
above  by  means  of  State  loans  and  the  wholesale  issue  of 
paper  money  which  depreciated  the  currency  to  such  an 
extent  as  still  further  to  inflate  the  already  inflated  prices. 
It  was  thus  that  during  the  war  nearly  the  whole  nation 
came  to  be  living  upon  borrowed  money,  and  it  still  continues 
to  do  so. 

Since  the  coming  of  peace  the  problem  has  been  how  to 
return  to  the  normal.  At  the  close  of  other  wars  the 


The  War  and  the  Aftermath 


279 


Government  have  usually  disbanded  the  troops  for  which 
they  had  no  further  use,  exploited  the  loyalty  of  the  soldiers 
and  then  turned  them  adrift  to  starve  or  to  make  shift  as 
best  they  could.  In  spite  of  public  professions,  there  is 
no  reason  to  suppose  that  the  Government  would  not  have 
acted  any  differently  this  time,  if  it  had  dared  to  do  so. 
But  the  scale  of  the  present  war  made  it  dangerous  for 
the  Government  to  play  the  old  confidence  trick  with  im¬ 
punity.  The  fact  that  nearly  every  worker  was  during 
the  war  either  directly  or  indirectly  in  the  public  service 
and  the  fact  that  the  workers  are  strongly  organized  made 
such  a  policy  unthinkable,  and  so  unemployed  allowances 
are  made  and  the  unemployed  draw  pay  until  such  time 
as  industry  can  pick  itself  up  again.  But  a  suspicion 
gains  ground  that  it  is  no  easy  matter  to  get  the  wheels 
of  industry  in  motion  again.  It  appears  that  the  problem 
of  reorganizing  for  peace  is  going  to  be  a  much  more  difficult 
matter  than  organization  for  war.  Consider  for  a  moment 
what  has  been  taking  place.  Speculative  finance,  the 
motive  force  of  industrialism,  has  for  over  four  years 
orientated  itself  around  war  production.  With  peace  all 
this  activity  has  come  to  an  end.  Can  the  old  motive  and 
driving  force  of  speculative  finance  become  again  operative 
in  the  industries  it  has  forsaken  ?  It  is  questionable. 
It  was  an  easy  matter  to  transfer  the  labour  of  the  community 
from  peace  production  to  war  production  because  it  was 
a  movement  that  was  in  accord  with  the  centrifugal  move¬ 
ment  in  finance.  All  that  was  necessary  was  for  the  Govern¬ 
ment  to  borrow  money,  place  orders  for  munitions  right 
and  left,  and  the  thing  was  accomplished.  To  reverse 
the  process  will  not  be  such  a  simple  matter,  because  it 
involves  a  centrifugal  movement  in  finance,  and  this  is 
contrary  to  the  normal  trend  of  things  in  these  days,  for 
whereas  the  centripetal  movement  was  easy  because  it 
could  be  accomplished  by  a  centralized  initiative,  a  centri¬ 
fugal  movement  demands  a  distributed  one,  and  while  our 
society  responds  readily  to  the  touch  of  a  centralized  initia¬ 
tive,  the  organs  necessary  to  the  exercise  of  a  distributed 
initiative  were  in  the  interests  of  commercial  exploitation 
destroyed  in  the  past. 


280  A  Guildsmari’s  Interpretation  of  History 


It  will  make  the  position  clearer  to  say  that  a  distributed 
initiative  exists  in  any  society  just  to  the  extent  that  a 
man  can  employ  himself.  The  peasant  State  enjoys  a 
distributed  initiative  because,  when  every  man  owns  his 
own  plot  of  land  or  shares  in  a  communal  holding,  he  can 
set  himself  to  work.  This  is  the  reason  why  peasant  nations 
recuperate  so  quickly  after  wars,  even  under  modern  con¬ 
ditions.  When  a  war  is  over,  every  man  can  go  back  to 
his  own  plot  of  land  and  work  away  just  as  he  did  before 
the  war  broke  out.  But  with  highly  complex  industrial 
communities,  whose  activities  are  based  upon  a  highly 
complex  system  of  finance  and  which  produce  largely  for 
distant  markets,  it  is  different,  because  only  a  small  per¬ 
centage  of  the  activities  of  such  communities  have  a  basis 
in  real  human  and  fundamental  needs.  Production  in 
such  communities  comes  to  depend  upon  all  manner  of 
things,  while  most  members  of  such  communities  are  de¬ 
pendent  upon  some  one  else  for  employment — ultimately 
upon  the  possessors  of  capital  who  in  such  communities 
monopolize  all  initiative.  Hence  it  is  that  so  long  as 
present  conditions  of  wealth  distribution  obtain,  if  a  revival 
of  trade  is  to  take  place  it  must  proceed  from  the  initiative 
of  the  small  group  at  the  top  who  control  the  financial  situa¬ 
tion,  and  this  places  a  responsibility  upon  their  shoulders 
heavier  than  they  can  bear.  Hitherto  industrial  initiative 
proceeded  from  below  and  was  exploited  by  financiers 
from  above.  But  now  the  position  is  entirely  reversed. 
The  short-sighted  policy  of  financiers  has  gradually  taken 
away  initiative  from  the  man  below.  In  seeking  to  con¬ 
centrate  all  wealth  in  his  own  hands,  the  financier  has, 
unfortunately  for  his  own  peace  of  mind,  saddled  himself 
with  the  responsibility  of  industrial  initiative,  and  I  doubt 
not  it  will  prove  to  be  a  burden  too  heavy  for  him  to  sup¬ 
port.  The  man  below,  so  long  as  he  enjoyed  autonomy, 
could  exercise  initiative,  since  the  range  of  conditions  he 
had  to  comprehend  was  limited  and  familiar.  But  as  a 
result  of  centralization  the  whole  complex  economic  phe¬ 
nomenon  of  our  society  would  have  to  be  comprehended 
intellectually  if  an  initiative  such  as  would  set  the  machinery 
in  motion  again  is  to  be  exercised,  and  as  the  experience 


The  War  and  the  Aftermath 


281 


of  every  man  is  limited,  this  becomes  an  impossible  pro¬ 
position.  Industry  can  no  longer  be  kept  going  by  the 
momentum  it  inherited  from  the  past,  and  if  trade  is  to 
revive  it  must  be  galvanized  into  activity  from  above,  and 
that  is  a  different  story. 

Though  I  am  persuaded  that  there  is  finally  no  escape 
from  the  economic  cul-de-sac  apart  from  a  return  to  Mediae¬ 
val  conditions,  involving  a  redistribution  of  wealth  and 
initiative,  it  is  yet  possible  that  the  crisis  may  be  postponed 
a  few  years  by  means  of  financial  jugglery.  A  glimmer 
of  light  comes  from  America,  which,  having  become  the 
financial  centre  of  the  world,  holds  the  key  to  the  position. 
It  is  proposed  that  the  United  States  should  raise  an  enor¬ 
mous  loan  for  Europe  to  enable  the  War  Powers  to  restore 
their  industry  and  credit.  The  principal  means  to  this 
end  will  be  a  loan  and  bond  issue  such  as  has  never  before 
been  seen,  of  a  nature  to  secure  the  necessary  funds  for 
these  Powers  to  buy  all  they  require  and  to  extend  their 
credit  as  long  as  may  be  necessary — ten,  twenty,  or  thirty 
years  if  requisite,  until  the  time  comes  when  the  European 
countries  no  longer  need  assistance.  This  proposal  is  not 
a  purely  philanthropic  one.  In  making  it  the  United 
States  is  just  as  anxious  to  solve  her  own  economic  problem 
as  that  of  the  European  Powers,  for  America  finds  herself 
in  a  position  the  exact  reverse  to  that  in  which  Germany 
found  herself  before  the  war.  Germany  found  herself 
in  financial  difficulties  because  her  industries  made  too 
little  profit.  America  is  in  financial  difficulties  because 
during  the  war  she  has  made  too  much  profit.  The  con¬ 
sequence  is  that  while  her  banks  are  choked  with  money 
for  which  investments  cannot  be  found,  her  industries 
are  producing  a  plethora  of  goods  for  which  markets  must 
be  found.  In  these  difficult  circumstances  America  has 
hit  upon  the  cunning  device  of  lending  money  to  the  Euro¬ 
pean  Powers  in  order  that  they  may  find  themselves  in 
a  position  to  buy  the  goods  which  America  must  produce, 
for  production  in  America,  as  in  Germany  before  the  war, 
is  no  longer  controlled  by  demand  but  by  plant.  It  is  a 
Gilbertian  situation  the  sequel  of  which  promises  to  be 
interesting.  America  lends  money  to  the  European  Powers 


282  A  Guildsmari’s  Interpretation  of  History 


in  order  that  they  may  find  themselves  in  a  position  to 
buy  American  goods.  The  European  Powers  lend  money  to 
their  manufacturers  in  order  that  they  may  be  in  a  position 
to  produce  still  more  goods.  But  the  manufacturers  being 
persuaded  that  their  salvation  is  to  be  found  in  keeping 
wages  down,  find  that  while  production  increases  consump¬ 
tion  will  not.  Hence  unemployment  and  hence  unemployed 
pay,  the  amount  of  which  is  increased  from  time  to  time 
in  order  that  people  shall  be  in  a  position  to  buy  the  goods 
that  must  be  produced  until  a  point  is  reached  at  which 
a  man  may  be  well  off  if  he  won’t  work  but  only  earns  a 
bare  subsistence  if  he  does.  The  period  for  the  repayment 
of  loans  is  extended  from  thirty  to  fifty  years,  from  fifty 
to  a  hundred,  from  a  hundred  to  a  thousand  years.  It  is 
an  enchanting  prospect  to  which  it  is  difficult  to  see  the 
end,  for  as  the  tendency  of  finance  is  increasingly  centri¬ 
petal  it  can  only  be  saved  from  collapse  by  a  centrifugal 
movement  which  redistributes  the  wealth  produced.  If 
progress  is  to  be  along  these  lines,  a  time  will  come  when 
all  Europe  will  be  living  upon  borrowed  money  and  can 
keep  on  borrowing  because  America  fears  the  collapse  of 
her  economic  system  if  she  refuses  to  lend. 

Of  course  things  won’t  work  out  exactly  like  that. 
Human  nature  would  soon  come  in  to  upset  such  a  purely 
economic  calculation.  But  it  is  as  logical  and  as  probable 
as  the  deduction  from  any  other  economic  theory  which 
disregards  the  moral  issue.  The  really  interesting  thing 
about  the  present  situation  is  that  it  brings  the  modern 
world  right  up  against  the  problem  of  wealth  distribu¬ 
tion.  The  immediate  cause  of  the  war  I  showed  was  due  to 
over-production  in  Germany  in  the  sense  that  by  allowing 
machinery  to  proceed  unregulated  production  had  got 
ahead  of  demand  and  more  goods  were  produced  than  the 
markets  would  absorb.  Ignoring  the  fact  that  the  war 
was  precipitated  because  the  industrial  system  before  the 
war  had  reached  its  limit  of  expansion,  the  Government 
publicists  and  others  nevertheless  advocate  a  policy  of 
maximum  production  as  the  path  of  economic  salvation. 
They  propose,  in  fact,  to  reproduce  in  an  intensified  form 
the  very  conditions  that  brought  the  war  about. 


The  War  and  the  Aftermath 


288 


Meanwhile  the  manifest  fallacy  of  such  a  policy  becomes 
apparent  from  the  fact  that  owing  to  the  flood  of  profiteering 
that  the  war  let  loose  the  workers  have  rebelled.  They 
are  refusing  to  produce  merely  to  make  profits  for  others, 
and  under  these  changed  circumstances  a  colour  is  given 
to  the  cry  for  increased  production.  But  it  is  a  false  issue, 
since,  low  as  production  has  fallen,  we  produce  ten,  probably 
fifty,  times  as  much  as  is  necessary  for  our  needs,  considered 
quantitatively.  The  present  system  is  not  maintained 
because  an  enormous  output  is  necessary  for  our  needs, 
but  to  effect  distribution.  We  employ  people  in  un¬ 
necessary  production  in  order  that  they  may  have  the 
money  to  buy  the  necessary  things  of  which  we  produce 
too  little.  If  any  one  doubts  this,  let  him  answer  the 
question  how  it  came  about  that  in  the  Middle  Ages,  when 
there  were  no  machines,  the  town  worker  earned  an  equi¬ 
valent  of  three  or  four  pounds  a  week  and  the  agricultural 
worker  two-thirds  of  that  amount,  taking  the  value  of  money 
as  it  existed  before  the  war.1  Of  course  it  cannot  be 
answered.  The  paradoxical  situation  in  which  we  find 
ourselves  is  due  entirely  to  the  fact  that  since  capitalists 
got  the  upper  hand  they  have  consistently  refused  to  face 
the  problem  of  distribution.  But  truth  will  be  out.  Nemesis 
seems  to  say  to  the  financiers  :  “  If  ye  will  not  distribute 
wealth,  neither  shall  ye  distribute  goods  ;  and  if  ye  do  not 
distribute  goods,  neither  shall  ye  distribute  dividends/’ 
It  is  not  Socialists  who  have  created  this  problem,  but  the 
financiers  themselves.  The  problem  is  their  own  making, 
due  to  the  avaricious  dog-in-the-manger  spirit  in  which 
they  have  pursued  the  accumulation  of  wealth.  While 
they  exerted  all  their  energies  towards  increasing  the  volume 
of  production,  they  entirely  lost  sight  of  the  fact  that  a 

1  “  The  wages  of  the  artisan  during  the  period  to  which  I  refer  (the 
fifteenth  century)  were  generally,  and  through  the  year,  about  6d.  per  day. 
Those  of  the  agricultural  labourer  were  about  4d.  I  am  referring  to  ordinary 
artisans  and  ordinary  workers.  ...  It  is  plain  the  day  was  one  of  eight 
hours.  .  .  .  Sometimes  the  labourer  is  paid  for  every  day  in  the  year,  though 
it  is  certain  he  did  not  work  on  Sundays  and  principal  holidays.  Very  often 
the  labourer  is  fed.  In  this  case,  the  cost  of  maintenance  is  put  down 
at  from  6d.  to  8d.  a  week.  .  .  .  Food  was  so  abundant  and  cheap  that  it 
was  no  great  matter  to  throw  it  in  with  the  wages  ”  ( Six  Centuries  of  Work 
and  Wages,  by  J.  E.  Thorold  Rogers,  pp.  327-8). 


284  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


day  would  come  when  their  position  would  become  perilous 
unless  such  increase  of  production  was  accompanied  by 
a  corresponding  increase  in  consumption.  So  blind  were 
they  to  this  fact  that  so  far  from  seeking  to  increase  con¬ 
sumption  their  constant  thought  has  been  how  to  decrease 
it  by  reducing  wages.  We  are  up  against  the  logical  ending 
of  the  Mercantile  and  Manchester  School  theory  of  economics 
— that  the  wealth  of  nations  is  best  secured  by  increasing 
production  and  decreasing  consumption.  The  Nemesis  of 
such  a  false  philosophy  has  overtaken  the  world  at  last. 

It  is  an  open  question  whether  a  way  can  be  found  out 
of  the  present  impasse  and  a  financial  crash  such  as  might 
precipitate  revolution  averted.  For  it  is  to  be  feared 
that  the  pace  at  which  the  crisis  is  developing  is  much 
faster  than  any  possible  counter-measures  that  could  be 
put  into  operation.  But  if  anything  at  all  can  be  done 
it  is  the  wealthy  alone  who  can  do  it.  If  they  could  be 
induced  to  face  the  facts,  to  realize  that  the  problem  is 
the  inevitable  consequence  of  their  policy  of  for  ever 
investing  and  reinvesting  surplus  wealth  for  the  purposes  of 
further  increase  they  might  be  led  to  see  that  the  spending 
of  their  surplus  wealth  in  unremunerative  ways  would  ease 
the  situation  if  it  could  not  forestall  catastrophe.  The 
present  impasse  could  have  been  predicted  by  any  one  who 
had  reflected  on  the  famous  arithmetical  calculation  that 
shows  that  a  halfpenny  put  out  to  5  per  cent,  compound 
interest  on  the  first  day  of  the  Christain  era  would  by  now 
amount  to  more  money  than  the  earth  could  contain.  This 
calculation  clearly  demonstrates  a  limit  to  the  possibilities 
of  compound  interest,  yet  it  is  to  such  a  principle  that  what 
we  call  “sound  finance  ”  is  committed. 


CHAPTER  XX 


BOLSHEVISM  AND  THE  CLASS  WAR 

To  the  average  Englishman  Bolshevism  came  like  a  bolt 
from  the  blue.  He  was  sympathetic  with  the  Russian  Revo¬ 
lution  of  March,  1917.  He  had  heard  of  the  Russian  bureau¬ 
cracy,  of  the  secret  police,  of  the  transportations  to  Siberia, 
etc.,  and  he  welcomed  the  overthrow  of  the  Tsarist  regime 
as  the  overthrow  of  an  intolerable  tyranny.  But  the  Revolu¬ 
tion  that  put  the  Bolsheviks  in  power  he  neither  understood 
nor  sympathized  with,  and  why  the  doctrine  of  the  Class 
War  should  have  spread  with  such  lightning  rapidity  over 
Europe  and  America  he  was  entirely  incapable  of  com¬ 
prehending.  The  Press,  to  all  appearances,  found  itself  in 
the  same  dilemma  as  himself.  German  gold,  Russian  gold, 
Hungarian  gold,  have  in  turn  been  offered  as  explanations 
for  its  conquests,  or  it  is  represented  as  a  summer  madness 
incapable  of  rational  explanation. 

Yet  such  is  not  the  case.  The  rise  to  power  of  the 
Bolsheviks  and  the  subsequent  spread  of  their  creed  is  capable 
of  a  perfectly  intelligible  explanation  which  would  have 
found  its  way  into  all  the  papers  had  it  been  convenient  to 
the  Government  to  admit  it.  It  may  be  true  that  the 
Bolsheviks  were  at  the  beginning  supplied  with  German 
gold.  I  do  not  know  whether  it  is  true  or  not.  If  it  were 
offered  them  I  do  not  suppose  they  would  have  refused  it 
any  more  than  they  and  other  Russian  revolutionary  anti-war 
exiles  in  Switzerland  refused  to  travel  through  Germany 
in  the  train  that  the  Kaiser  so  kindly  placed  at  their  disposal ; 
and  the  German  Government  has  proved  itself  so  blind  where 
psychological  issues  were  concerned  that  it  is  quite  possible 
it  did  in  the  first  instance  supply  the  Bolsheviks  with  the 
wherewithal  to  carry  on  their  propaganda.  But  whether 

285 


280  A  Guildsmaris  Interpretation  of  History 


they  did  or  not  does  not  account  for  the  rise  of  Bolshevism 
or  the  spread  of  it  in  other  countries,  which  is  finally  to  be 
accounted  for  by  the  fact  that  capitalists  all  over  the  world 
have  refused  for  so  long  to  face  the  facts  of  modern  civilization, 
that  a  point  was  reached  at  length  when  the  “  evil  day,”  as 
it  is  called,  could  no  longer  be  postponed.  Immediately, 
however,  it  was  otherwise.  The  Bolsheviks  rose  to  power 
in  Russia  because,  owing  to  the  incapacity  of  Kerensky  and 
his  colleagues  and  the  political  immaturity  of  the  Russian 
people,  things  had  reached  such  a  pass  that  Russia  became 
entirely  incapable  of  carrying  on  the  war  successfully  and 
was  soon  obliged  to  accept  peace  on  any  terms.  At  the  begin¬ 
ning  of  1917  Russia  had  an  army  which,  though  no  doubt 
better  equipped  than  in  the  first  years  of  the  war,  was  still  far 
too  big.  The  towns  were  full  of  idle  soldiery  ;  the  railways 
were  in  imminent  peril  of  breaking  down.  Some  of  the 
Tsar’s  ministers  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the  best  thing 
to  do  was  to  negotiate  a  separate  peace,  but  the  Tsar,  desirous 
of  honouring  his  agreement  with  the  Allies,  objected,  and  so 
an  impasse  was  reached.  These  ministers  then  sought  to 
force  the  hand  of  the  Tsar  by  the  provocation  of  a  sham 
revolution  which  they  believed  they  could  easily  suppress, 
but  which  they  could  use  as  an  excuse  for  bringing  the  war 
to  an  end.  But  things  worked  out  differently  from  what 
they  had  expected.  The  disorder  they  had  provoked  turned 
against  them  ;  instead  of  a  mock  revolution,  it  proved 
a  real  one.  The  Provisional  Government  which  came  into 
power  decided  to  stand  by  the  Allies.  At  the  same  time, 
however,  Soviets  of  Workmen’s  and  Soldiers’  Deputies, 
formed  after  the  model  of  the  St.  Petersburg  Workmen’s 
Soviet  which  was  in  being  in  the  unsuccessful  Revolution 
of  1905,  sprang  up  in  the  towns  under  the  leadership  and 
control  of  doctrinaire  Socialists  who,  relegating  the  issue 
of  the  war  to  a  minor  position,  whole-heartedly  set  about  to 
promote  the  progress  of  the  Revolution.  The  notorious 
“  Ordre  No.  I  ”  of  the  Petrograd  Soviet  ruined  irretrievably 
the  discipline  of  the  army.  In  consequence  the  great  effort 
of  national  regeneration  which,  many  people  hoped,  might 
spring  out  of  the  Revolution  and  pull  the  country  together, 
became  more  and  more  remote  as  the  first  patriotic  enthusiasm 


Bolshevism  and  the  Class  War  287 


of  the  Revolution  died  down.  Instead,  the  military  and 
economic  muddle  gradually  increased,  until  the  demand  of 
the  anti-war  elements  for  peace  negotiations  began  to  be 
supported  on  the  plea  of  necessity.  The  growing  unpopularity 
of  Kerensky  with  all  classes  led  to  his  downfall  in  November 
1917,  and  the  Bolsheviks,  who  knew  what  they  wanted  and 
had  the  energy  and  the  armed  backing  to  force  their  will 
on  the  country,  came  into  power. 

Now  it  is  necessary  to  understand  that  the  Bolsheviks 
were  not  supported  by  the  garrisons  and  the  discontented 
elements  generally  throughout  the  country  because  of  any 
widespread  belief  in  the  theories  of  Marx,1  but  because  of 
the  failure  of  the  other  political  parties  to  consolidate  their 
authority  and  pursue  an  energetic  and  coherent  policy. 
The  Bolsheviks  were  easily  able  to  paralyse  the  feeble  efforts 
of  the  Provisional  Government.  At  the  same  time  they 
promised  to  save  Russia  by  making  peace  with  the  enemy 
and  declaring  an  international  war  upon  capitalism.  It  was 
natural  that  their  promises  of  peace,  bread  and  wealth  should 
appeal  to  large  sections  of  the  Russian  people  at  such  a 
time.  The  people  in  the  towns  were  hungry.  This  fact  should 
not  be  lost  sight  of.  There  was  plenty  of  food  in  Russia, 
but  the  peasants  refused  to  part  with  it  for  money,  because 
money  would  not  buy  any  of  the  things  they  wanted.  It 
had  become  impossible,  for  example,  to  buy  a  spade  in  Russia. 
Bolshevism  gathered  strength  in  the  towns  because  it  was 
only  by  joining  the  Bolshevist  army  that  men  could  get  food. 
These  are  the  root  facts  of  the  Russian  situation  upon  which 
everything  else  hinges.  The  later  history  of  the  Revolution 
has  been,  as  might  have  been  expected,  a  record  of  ever 
greater  and  greater  distress  ;  opinions  differ  as  to  the  relative 
.  blame  of  the  old  regime,  the  Provisional  Government  and  the 
Bolsheviks  for  the  present  chaos  in  Russia,  but  this  is  not 
a  point  we  need  enter  into  here.  Such  success  as  Bolshevism 
has  had  in  Germany  and  Austria-Hungary  bears  an  analogy 
to  the  success  in  Russia  to  the  extent  that  in  each  case  it 
was  due  to  the  combined  influence  of  military  defeat,  blockade, 

1  “  Bolshevik  ”  means  "  majoritaire,”  and  refers  to  an  old  split  in  the 
Russian  Social-Democratic  Party  in  1903.  The  “  Mensheviks  ”  were  the 
minority  on  the  occasion  in  question.  Both  parties  accepted  the  theories 

of  Marx. 


288  A  Guildsman’s  Interpretation  of  History 


hunger  in  the  towns  and  the  intellectual  and  spiritual  bank¬ 
ruptcy  of  other  parties  in  the  State.  Whether  it  will  be 
finally  victorious  remains  to  be  seen.  But  it  is  important 
to  recognize  that  Bolshevism  enters  to  fill  a  vacuum.  It  will 
come  here,  as  to  every  other  country,  if  ever  our  bankruptcy 
of  policy  becomes  complete.  I  do  not  think  we  shall  suffer 
from  it,  because  it  so  happens  that  while  the  governing  class 
are  clearly  bankrupt  of  ideas  there  are  in  England  other 
forces  of  a  constructive  nature  which  gather  strength  daily. 

Now  this  general  bankruptcy  of  policy  and  the  menace 
of  Bolshevism  are  alike  due  to  the  fact  that  the  governing 
classes  in  this  as  of  all  industrialized  nations  have  consistently 
refused  to  recognize  the  growth  of  the  social  problem.  This 
refusal  has  been  a  matter  of  deliberate  choice,  for  they  have 
been  repeatedly  warned  of  the  risks  they  were  running, 
but  they  have  turned  deaf  ears  to  all  such  counsel.  It 
might  be  urged  in  extenuation  of  them  that  the  demand  for 
reform  has  invariably  been  associated  with  attacks  on  their 
position.  But  this  cannot  be  said  of  Ruskin,  who  made  an 
appeal  to  the  governing  class  which  leaves  them  no  possible 
excuse.  He  warned  them  in  unmistakable  language  that 
industrial  civilization  was  shooting  the  rapids. 

Still  nothing  was  done.  The  governing  and  commercial 
class  comforted  themselves  with  the  assurance  that  what 
Ruskin  said  might  be  true  but  it  was  not  practical.  But 
Nemesis  has  waited  upon  them.  They  refused  to  listen  to 
Ruskin  ;  they  are  having  to  listen  to  Marx.  If  Ruskin  chas¬ 
tised  them  with  whips,  Marx  chastises  them  with  scorpions. 
It  cannot  be  said  that  Ruskin  has  failed,  for  he  has  inspired 
an  enormous  number  of  people,  and  I  firmly  believe  that  he 
will  be  left  standing  when  all  the  intellectually  superior 
people  who  disregard  him  are  dead  and  forgotten.  For 
Ruskin  has  said  more  things  that  are  fundamentally  and 
finally  true  in  economics  than  any  one  else.  But  Marx  was 
a  realist  in  a  sense  that  Ruskin  was  not,  and  to  that  extent 
was  more  immediately  available  for  political  purposes. 
Ruskin  appealed  to  the  compassion  of  the  governing  class ; 
Marx  realized  they  hadn’t  got  any,  but  that  while  they 
were  not  to  be  moved  by  an  appeal  to  their  better  nature 
they  could  be  moved  by  fear.  He  based  his  calculations 


Bolshevism  and  the  Class  War  289 


therefore,  upon  that  assumption.  Hence  his  doctrine  of 
the  Class  War,  by  which  he  hoped  to  transfer  power  from 
the  hands  of  the  capitalists  to  those  of  the  proletariat.  While 
I  am  of  the  opinion  that  as  a  policy  it  is  finally  mistaken, 
for  the  result  of  preaching  it  has  not  been  to  create  working- 
class  solidarity  but  discord  everywhere,1  and  while  it  distorts 
history  to  prove  that  class  warfare  has  always  existed,  it 
nevertheless  rests  on  a  fact  that  is  undeniably  true,  namely, 
that  under  the  existing  economic  system  the  interests  of 
capital  and  labour  are  irreconcilably  opposed — a  fact  which 
Ruskin  himself  admitted  when  he  said,  “  The  art  of  making 
yourself  rich,  in  the  ordinary  mercantile  economist's  sense, 
is  equally  and  necessarily  the  art  of  keeping  your  neighbour 
poor."  But  while  Marx  interpreted  this  fact  in  the  terms 
of  persons  as  a  warfare  between  classes,  Ruskin,  on  the 
contrary,  saw  this  conflict  of  interests  as  the  inevitable 
accompaniment  of  a  materialist  ideal  of  life  which  rejects 
religion  and  art  and  their  sweetening  and  refining  influences — 
an  interpretation  which  I  am  persuaded  is  the  true  one. 
For  you  can  construct  on  Ruskin’s  interpretation,  but  not 
upon  that  of  Marx,  for  his  materialism  and  class  warfare 
end  finally  in  producing  anarchy  and  bitterness.  They 
destroy  confidence  and  goodwill,  and  so  finally  defeat  their 
own  ends.  And  so  it  happens  that  while  Marx,  by  creating 
a  driving  force,  has  forced  the  issue  of  social  reconstruction 
to  the  front,  experience  will  prove  that  Ruskin  laid  the 
foundation  that  can  be  built  upon,  and  I  am  persuaded  he 
will  come  into  favour  when  reconstruction  is  taken  seriously. 
For  Ruskin  by  keeping  himself  clear  of  class  considerations 
provides  a  common  ground  on  which  all  may  meet. 

It  was  because  the  Bolsheviks  declared  the  war  to  be  a 
capitalist  war  that  their  gospel  spread  so  rapidly  over  Europe. 
In  the  immediate  sense  this  charge  was  untrue  except  in 
the  case  of  Germany,  who  definitely  undertook  the  war  to 
relieve  the  pressure  of  competition  by  forcing  German  goods 
on  foreign  markets.  But  ultimately  it  is  true,  since  but 
for  the  struggle  for  markets  and  concessions  that  capitalism 
brought  with  it  there  would  have  been  no  war.  Hence  it 
was  the  Bolsheviks  in  declaring  war  on  the  capitalists  of 
1  See  chapter  on  “  The  Class  War  ”  in  my  Guilds  and  the  Social  Crisis. 

19 


290  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


all  nations  did  challenge  the  reality  that  lay  behind  the 
war,  and  it  was  because  of  this  that  their  propaganda  has  been 
followed  by  such  success  in  other  countries.  The  Bolsheviks 
touched  a  subconscious  chord  of  the  workers  of  Europe. 
Their  gospel  found  a  ready  response  in  the  democracies  of 
all  countries,  and  would  certainly  have  carried  all  before 
it  but  for  the  excesses  (which  there  is  no  reason  to  doubt) 
of  the  Bolshevik  regime  in  Russia.  The  attempts  of  the 
governing  class  to  prevent  the  spread  of  its  doctrines  are 
the  last  word  in  ineptitude,  and  are  more  calculated  to  further 
them  than  to  destroy  them.  Instead  of  asking  themselves 
why  Bolshevism  has  arisen  in  the  world  and  seeking  to  remove 
the  evils  that  are  responsible  for  its  outbreak,  they  still 
pursue  their  stupid  old  policy  of  sitting  on  the  safety-valve 
and  can  think  of  nothing  but  repression.  Now  in  the  face  of 
any  serious  social  danger,  repression  of  extremists  is  absolutely 
necessary  in  order  to  gain  time  to  do  the  things  that  require 
to  be  done,  and  the  sincerest  reformer  might  be  driven  to 
employ  repression  at  times,  but  there  is  finally  no  other 
excuse  for  its  use.  Unless  repression  is  accompanied  by 
real  reform,  it  only  aggravates  the  danger.  He  is  a  fool 
who  imagines  that  a  menace  of  world-wide  significance  such 
as  Bolshevism  is  can  be  stamped  out  merely  by  repression. 
It  can  certainly  be  eradicated,  but  only  by  removing  its 
cause,  which  is  finally  to  be  found  in  the  gross  injustices  of 
our  social  system.  Partly  as  a  result  of  the  Socialist  agitation, 
and  partly  as  the  result  of  external  causes,  of  increasing 
economic  pressure,  of  motor-cars  and  luxury  which  were 
flaunted  in  the  eyes  of  the  people  before  the  war,  the  people 
were  becoming  conscious  of  the  fact  that  they  were  the 
victims  of  exploitation,  while  the  outbreak  of  shameless 
profiteering  during  the  war  converted  what  had  hitherto 
been  a  special  grievance  of  the  working  classes  into  a  general 
grievance  affecting  every  class  of  the  community ;  for 
everybody  except  the  few  profiteers  are  affected  by  the 
decreasing  purchasing  power  of  their  earnings.  No  single 
thing  has  so  entirely  destroyed  the  confidence  of  the  people 
in  the  good  faith  of  the  governing  class  as  the  way  they 
allowed  this  abuse  to  grow  up.  It  has  been  the  last  straw 
that  breaks  the  camel’s  back.  During  the  last  ten  years 


Bolshevism  and  the  Class  War 


291 


the  governing  class  have  entirely  bartered  away  their  credit, 
and  it  can  only  be  restored  by  the  exercise  of  a  measure 
of  magnanimity  equal  to  their  former  short-sightedness. 
There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  such  magnanimity  will 
be  exercised.  Avarice  and  stupidity  got  them  into  difficulties, 
and  pride  prevents  them  getting  out  of  them.  In  desperation, 
they  misrepresent  and  heap  abuse  on  the  working  man  in 
the  hope  that  public  opinion  will  rally  to  their  support. 
But  such  folly  only  makes  matters  worse.  It  goes  down 
less  and  less  with  the  general  public  and  increases  the  bitter¬ 
ness  of  the  working  class,  who  have  been  patient  and  long- 
suffering.  If  they  had  not  been,  things  could  never  have 
reached  such  a  pass.  The  governing  class,  to  retain  power, 
would  need  to  be  born  again  in  order  that  they  might  put 
public  interests  before  private  interests.  But  they  are 
past  praying  for.  There  is  a  Turkish  saying  that  “  a  herring 
rots  from  the  head.”  It  is  worth  remembering  when  con¬ 
sidering  the  chaotic  state  of  this  country.  The  governing 
class  are  responsible,  for  with  them  power  finally  resides. 
Reform  must  come  not  merely  because  nothing  less  will 
satisfy  the  workers,  but  because  our  economic  system  is 
rapidly  reaching  a  deadlock.  The  old  political  game  can’t 
be  played  much  longer. 

I  said  that  repression  was  no  remedy  for  Bolshevism.  As 
a  matter  of  fact  it  is  in  one  sense  the  fruit  of  repression.  The 
foundations  of  Bolshevism  were  laid  in  Russia  before  the  war 
by  the  repressive  policy  of  the  old  regime.  Had  the  Russian 
Government  permitted  freedom  of  discussion  on  political 
questions,  the  country  would  not,  when  the  Revolution 
came,  have  found  itself  so  completely  at  the  mercy  of  political 
extremists,  for  the  psychological  factor  that  allowed  things 
in  Russia  so  rapidly  to  assume  an  extreme  form  was  that 
as  political  discussion  was  forbidden  by  the  old  regime, 
both  the  Government  and  the  people  lost  all  sense  of  political 
realities,  and  the  overthrow  of  the  old  regime  was  followed 
by  a  Babel  of  political  opinion  fatal  to  reasonable  judgment. 
If  in  England  a  more  conservative  spirit  prevails,  it  is  entirely 
due  to  the  fact  that  on  the  whole  we  have  enjoyed  freedom 
of  discussion.  It  is  insufficiently  recognized  that  such 
freedom  tends  towards  constitutional  methods.  On  the 


292  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


other  hand,  while  we  have  enjoyed  freedom  of  speech  there 

have  always  been  reactionary  (I  use  the  word  in  the  accepted 

sense)  elements  in  English  life  which  have  been  plotting  against 

the  people,  and  it  is  owing  to  the  gross  stupidity  of  these 

people  that  Bolshevism  has  any  foothold  at  all  among  us, 

since  apart  from  their  activities  the  extremists  would  not 

have  been  listened  to.  I  cannot  say  I  am  altogether  sorry 

there  are  a  few  such  stupid  people  among  us,  since  indirectly 

they  have  been  the  means  of  waking  things  up.  A  Bolshevik 

government  is  a  thing  to  be  feared  as  the  worst  of  all  tyrannies 

but  it  is  questionable  whether  anything  at  all  would  get 

done  were  the  fear  of  Bolshevism  entirely  removed.  A 

short  account  of  the  rise  of  Bolshevism  in  England  will  make 

it  clear  that  the  “  labour  unrest  ”  has  been  deliberately 

%/ 

provoked. 

“  In  the  summer  of  1900  a  strike  broke  out  in  South 
Wales  on  the  Taff  Vale  Railway,  in  the  course  of  which 
the  Company,  naturally  enough,  suffered  a  certain  amount 
of  injury.  They  applied  to  the  High  Court  for  an  injunction 
not  only  against  alleged  individual  wrongdoers,  but  against 
the  Amalgamated  Society  of  Railway  Servants  itself,  whose 
agents  these  wrongdoers  were.  They  also  commenced  a  civil 
suit  for  damages  against  the  Union  in  its  corporate  capacity. 
To  the  surprise  of  all  who  were  familiar  with  Trade  Union 
law  and  practice,  and  to  the  consternation  of  the  Labour 
world,  the  A.S.R.S.  was  mulcted,  in  costs  and  damages, 
to  the  tune  of  £42,000,  and  it  was  decided  that  a  Trade  Union 
could  be  sued  in  its  collective  capacity,  and  its  corporate 
funds  made  liable  for  a  tortious  act  committed  by  any  of 
its  officials  or  members  who  could  be  deemed  to  be  its  agents/’1 

It  was  this  judgment  which  was  subsequently  upheld 
by  the  House  of  Lords  that  created  the  Labour  Party. 
Hitherto  it  had  never  occurred  to  any  one  to  sue  a  Trade 
Union  for  loss  of  profits  in  the  case  of  a  strike.  It  was 
supposed  that  the  Trade  Union  Act  of  1871  afforded 
absolute  protection  to  Union  funds.  But  this  judgment 
struck  a  blow  at  the  very  existence  of  Trade  Unionism 
and  immediately  led  to  the  return  of  forty  Labour  members 
to  the  House  of  Commons  in  1906,  which  was  speedily 

1  Trade  Unionism,  by  C.  M.  Lloyd,  p.  38. 


Bolshevism  and  the  Class  W ar 


293 


followed  by  the  passing  of  the  Trades  Disputes  Acts  that 
reversed  the  decision  of  the  Courts. 

It  would  have  been  well  for  the  governing  class  if  they 
could  have  let  matters  rest  there.  Once  the  Trades  Disputes 
Act  was  passed  the  Labour  Party  rapidly  declined  in  influence, 
and  so  things  might  have  remained  but  for  another  decision 
of  the  Courts.  Hitherto  the  Labour  Party  had  been 
financed  by  a  levy  on  the  members  of  affiliated  societies, 
of  which  the  great  majority  were  Trade  Unionists.  But 
this  did  not  suit  a  minority  who  held  other  political  views. 
“  Mr.  W.  V.  Osborne,  the  secretary  of  one  of  the  branches 
of  the  Amalgamated  Society  of  Railway  Servants,  strenuously 
opposed  the  right  of  his  Union  to  levy  its  members  or  con¬ 
tribute  from  its  funds  in  support  of  the  Labour  Party.  An 
action  in  the  Chancery  Court  in  1908  went  in  favour  of  the 
Society;  but  the  judges  of  the  Court  of  Appeal  reversed  this 
decision,  and  their  judgment  was  finally  upheld  by  the 
House  of  Lords.”  1  The  effect  of  this  decision  was  doubtless, 
like  the  Taff  Vale  Judgment,  very  different  from  what  the 
Lords  of  Appeal  had  intended.  While  on  the  one  hand  the 
Liberal  Government  found  it  necessary  to  come  to  the  rescue 
of  the  Labour  members  by  introducing  payment  of  members, 
on  the  other  it  took  power  out  of  the  hands  of  the  moderate 
men  in  the  Labour  Movement  and  put  it  into  the  hands 
of  extremists  by  destroying  faith  in  constitutional  reform. 
The  Labour  Party  had  secured  the  support  of  the  Trade 
Unions  by  preaching  the  doctrine  that  the  ends  of  Labour 
could  be  better  secured  through  Labour  representation 
in  Parliament  than  by  means  of  strikes.  But  after  the 
Osborne  Judgment  this  idea  became  discredited.  It  became 
clear  that  if  Labour  devoted  its  energies  to  reform  by  con¬ 
stitutional  means  it  could  never  be  sure  of  its  position  and 
any  victories  it  might  win  could  be  snatched  from  it  by 
decisions  of  the  Courts.  Hence  the  advocates  of  direct 
action,  who  hitherto  had  scarcely  been  listened  to,  became 
very  influential.  In  less  than  a  twelvemonth  after  the 
Osborne  Judgment  had  been  upheld  in  the  House  of  Lords, 
and  as  a  direct  consequence  of  it,  there  came  in  1911  the 
great  strikes  of  the  dockers,  the  transport  workers  and 

1  Trade  Unionism,  by  C.  M.  Lloyd,  p.  40. 


294  A  Guildsman’s  Interpretation  of  History 


the  railway  men,  to  be  followed  after  a  few  months  by  the 
miners.  Thus  was  inaugurated  the  strike  movement  which 
continued  until  the  outbreak  of  war,  when  strikes  were 
suspended  only  to  be  revived  by  another  piece  of  stupidity 
on  the  part  of  the  powers  that  be — the  Munitions  Act,  which 
by  penalizing  official  Trade  Unions  in  the  event  of  a  strike 
led  to  the  unofficial  movement  known  as  the  Shop  Stewards 
Movement. 

Now  the  effect  of  these  things — the  Taff  Vale  Judgment, 
the  Osborne  Judgment  and  the  Munitions  Act,  combined  with 
the  evasive  and  unsatisfactory  policy  of  the  Government  in 
Labour  disputes — instead  of  crushing  the  Labour  Movement, 
has  been  to  turn  what  was  a  comparatively  sleepy,  lethargic 
movement  into  an  active  fighting  force  by  firmly  planting 
in  the  mind  of  Labour  the  conviction  that  a  conspiracy  is 
abroad  to  defeat  their  demands  for  justice.  As  one  interested 
in  the  cause  of  Labour,  I  cannot  express  too  highly  my  appre¬ 
ciation  of  the  services  rendered  to  the  Labour  Movement  by 
the  Courts,  since  in  a  few  years,  through  their  folly,  they  have 
accomplished  more  in  the  way  of  vitalizing  the  movement 
than  a  century  of  agitators.  But  the  question  is  now  whether 
the  pursuit  of  such  folly  can  any  longer  serve  a  useful  purpose, 
for  a  suspicion  gains  ground  that  if  ever  confidence  is  to  be 
restored,  action  will  have  to  be  taken  against  the  lawyers. 
It  is  not  only  through  the  decisions  of  the  Courts  that  they 
create  bad  blood,  but  through  more  direct  industrial  activity. 
Since  the  spread  of  limited  liability  companies  they  have 
become  more  closely  associated  with  the  administration  of 
industry  than  was  the  case  before,  and  they  have  created 
endless  trouble  by  pursuing  everything  in  a  purely  legal 
spirit.  Wherever  they  make  their  appearance,  good  faith 
can  no  longer  be  taken  for  granted.  If  an  agreement  is 
made  with  Labour,  they  do  not  interpret  it  in  the  spirit 
in  which  it  was  intended,  but  according  to  the  letter.  They 
take  their  stand  on  what  is  written,  and  set  about  to  discover 
loopholes,  and  there  are  always  lawyers  ready  to  place  their 
services  at  the  disposal  of  any  capitalist  who  wants  to  evade 
things.  And  the  Courts  back  them  up  in  this  kind  of  thing. 
They  do  not  take  their  stand  on  the  broad  principle,  but  upon 
what  some  phrase  can  be  twisted  to  mean.  No  wonder 


Bolshevism  and  the  Class  War 


295 


Labour  is  suspicious.  It  has  every  reason  to  be.  It  under¬ 
stands  straightforward  dealing  and  can  respect  an  enemy 
who  is  open  in  his  dealings,  but  this  kind  of  twisting  and 
twining  is  a  constant  source  of  irritation  and  distrust, 
provocative  of  trouble.  When  the  Government  intervenes 
in  any  Labour  trouble,  it  too  finds  itself  at  the  mercy  of 
these  legal  influences  in  the  bureaucracy,  which,  affected 
only  by  documents,  appears  to  be  mentally  incapable 
of  sensing  a  situation.  If  the  law  is  being  brought  into 
contempt,  it  is  the  lawyers  who  are  to  blame. 

To  suspect  the  lawyers  as  the  agents  provocateurs  of 
Labour  unrest  is  not  unreasonable,  for  history  teaches  us  that, 
directly  or  indirectly,  the  lawyers  have  been  at  the  bottom 
of  every  rising  since  Roman  Law  was  revived.  Considering 
that  Roman  Law  corrupted  every  Mediaeval  institution  and 
changed  government  from  being  an  instrument  of  protection 
into  an  instrument  of  exploitation,  it  is  to  be  maintained  that 
the  growth  of  class  hatred  in  the  deeper  and  more  funda¬ 
mental  sense  is  finally  to  be  laid  to  its  charge.  Mediaeval 
society  was  organized  on  a  basis  of  reciprocal  rights  and 
duties — a  man  sacrificed  his  rights  who  did  not  perform 
his  duties.  But  Roman  Law  changed  all  this.  It  made 
rights  absolute  which  had  been  conditional,  while  it  made 
duties  optional.  It  became  the  friend  of  property  and  the 
enemy  of  the  people.  There  are  many  reasons  to  suppose 
that  Roman  Law  as  it  existed  under  the  Roman  Empire 
was  animated  by  an  entirely  different  spirit  from  that  which 
animated  the  lawyers  of  the  revival.  Roman  Law  was  not 
promoted  in  Rome  to  further  exploitation,  but  came  into 
existence  to  hold  together  a  corrupt  society  which  had  been 
rendered  unstable  by  capitalism,  and  as  such  its  spirit  was 
opportunist.  There  are  strong  reasons  for  supposing  that 
it  was  in  this  spirit  that  the  Roman  jurists  gave  legal  sanction 
to  private  property  as  the  easiest  way  of  avoiding  conflict 
between  neighbours,  for  they  did  not,  like  the  Mediaeval 
lawyers,  seek  to  enslave  the  people  by  the  destruction  of 
communal  rights.  On  the  contrary,  while  one  of  the  first 
measures  taken  by  the  Emperors  was  to  place  restrictions 
on  the  formation  of  voluntary  organizations  because  under 
the  Republic  they  had  been  used  as  a  basis  of  conspiracy, 


296  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


no  obstacle  was  placed  in  the  path  of  the  formation  of  such 
organizations  when  the  danger  had  passed  away.  As  early 
as  the  reign  of  Antoninus  Pius  the  Collegia  which  undertook 
public  functions  were  incorporated  by  Imperial  charter, 
and  the  custom  of  incorporating  them  was  followed  by  later 
Emperors.  The  same  thing  happened  with  respect  to  the 
treatment  of  slaves.  While  the  Mediaeval  jurists  were 
devising  means  for  the  reintroduction  of  slavery,  the  Roman 
jurists  did  their  best  to  humanize  the  institution.  Under 
the  Republic  and  early  Empire,  the  right  of  the  owner  over 
the  slave  was  absolute,  but  after  the  Antonines  restrictions 
were  placed  on  the  rights  of  owners,  and  provisions  made 
which  facilitated  the  manumission  of  slaves. 

It  was  not  from  the  spirit  of  the  Roman  jurists  that 
the  trouble  appears  to  have  arisen,  but  from  the  fact 
that  the  revival  of  Roman  Law  was  in  the  first  place  a 
revival  of  the  Justinian  Code,  which  rested  on  a  theory 
of  absolute  individual  ownership  of  property.  It  was 
this  that  brought  it  into  collision  with  the  Mediaeval  usage 
under  which  community  of  ownership,  or  at  any  rate  com¬ 
munity  of  use,  was  the  prevalent  custom.  It  was  because 
of  this  that  the  Roman  Law  of  the  revival  became  indi¬ 
vidualistic,  provocative  and  corrupt,  was  promoted  as  an 
instrument  of  oppression  and  has  been  used  as  such  ever 
since.  It  is  the  central  canker  in  our  society — the  active 
promoter  of  class  hatred,  as  decisions  of  the  Courts  have 
shown. 

This  is  no  idle  theory.  There  is  no  book  that  enjoys 
to-day  a  greater  popularity  among  the  workers  than  Mr 
Paul’s  book  The  State,1  the  whole  purpose  of  which  is  to 
show  that  State  Socialists  have  failed  to  understand  the 
nature  and  function  of  the  State,  inasmuch  as  from  the 
earliest  times  it  has  been  an  instrument  of  capitalist  ex¬ 
ploitation  and  cannot  therefore  be  used  for  the  purposes 
of  reconstruction.  Though  the  theory  he  maintains  suffers 
from  exaggeration,  it  is  important  to  recognize  that  the 
central  idea  of  the  book  has  the  support  of  at  least  one  Lord 
Chancellor,  for  when  Sir  Thomas  More  asked  the  question, 

1  The  State  :  its  Origin  and  Function,  by  William  Paul  (Socialist 
Labour  Press). 


Bolshevism  and  the  Class  War 


297 


“  What  is  Government  ?  ”  and  answered  it  by  saying  that 
it  is  “  a  certain  conspiracy  of  rich  men  procuring  their  own 
commodities  under  the  name  and  title  of  the  Common 
Wealth,”  he  said  precisely  the  same  thing  as  our  Bolsheviks 
are  saying  to-day.  If  I  differ  from  them,  it  is  not  in  respect 
to  what  exists,  but  as  to  the  remedy  to  be  applied.  It  is 
true,  as  our  Bolsheviks  maintain,  that  the  State  from  a  very 
early  date  has  existed  as  an  instrument  of  exploitation. 
But  it  does  not  follow  from  this  that  the  evils  consequent 
upon  such  exploitation  are  to  be  remedied  by  seeking  the 
destruction  of  the  State,  for  that  would  be  merely  to  pre¬ 
cipitate  chaos.  Moreover,  the  State  cannot  be  destroyed,  as 
the  Bolsheviks  in  Russia  have  found,  for  in  spite  of  all  the 
abuse  of  power  associated  with  it,  it  does  perform  a  function 
which  at  all  times  is  indispensable,  the  function  of  protec¬ 
tion,  of  maintaining  order.  Recognizing  that  to-day  this 
function  is  exercised  in  the  interests  of  the  wealthy,  the 
problem  that  presents  itself  is  how  the  State  may  be  so 
transformed  that  it  protects  the  workers  against  the 
exploiters  instead  of,  as  is  the  case  to-day,  the  exploiters 
against  the  workers.  This,  I  contend,  is  possible  by  seeking 
the  abolition  of  Roman  Law,  since  it  was  the  means  of  cor¬ 
rupting  the  State,  and  replacing  it  by  Mediaeval  Communal 
Law.  In  proportion  as  this  could  be  done,  the  spirit  of  the 
State  would  be  changed.  Instead  of  usurping  all  functions, 
it  would  delegate  them  to  communal  groups  of  workers 
organized  into  Guilds.  Instead  of  being  the  overwhelming 
and  dominating  power  it  is  to-day,  it  would,  stripped  of 
its  illegitimate  functions,  become  as  it  was  in  the  Middle 
Ages,  one  power  among  a  plurality  of  powers.  Such  a 
policy,  I  contend,  is  more  in  harmony  with  the  historical 
law  formulated  by  Marx,  “that  every  new  social  system 
develops  its  embryo  within  the  womb  of  the  old  system,” 
than  that  advocated  by  his  followers.  For  whereas  such 
a  policy  would  effect  a  complete  transformation  of  society 
by  action  from  within,  their  policy  seeks  only  destruction 
from  without. 


CHAPTER  XXI 


THE  PATH  TO  THE  GUILDS 

It  is  a  commonplace  of  modern  thought  to  say  that 
“  we  cannot  put  the  clock  back.”  But  if  recorded  history 
has  any  one  single  lesson  to  teach  us  more  than  another, 
it  is  precisely,  as  Mr.  Chesterton  has  said,  that  we  can. 
Twice  in  European  history  has  it  been  done.  The  first 
time  was  when  Christianity  restored  the  communal  basis 
of  society  after  it  had  been  destroyed  by  the  capitalism 
of  Greece  and  Rome,  and  the  second  was  when  this  com¬ 
munal  basis  of  Mediaeval  society  in  turn  was  destroyed 
and  capitalism  re-established  by  the  revival  of  Roman 
Law.1  The  recent  admission  of  the  Chancellor  of  the 
Exchequer,  that  ministers  are  so  overwhelmed  with  the 
details  of  administration  that  they  have  no  time  to  think, 
suggests  to  the  student  of  history  that  before  long  the  clock 
will  need  to  be  put  back  again.  For  it  is  manifest  that 
the  process  of  centralization  that  has  been  continuous  since 
the  reign  of  Henry  II  has  at  last  reached  a  point  beyond 
which  it  can  proceed  no  farther,  since  the  Government  is 
confessedly  at  the  mercy  of  forces  it  cannot  control.  In 
these  circumstances  there  is  but  one  thing  to  be  done — to 
substitute  control  from  without  by  control  from  within  ; 
or,  in  other  words,  to  restore  the  communal  basis  of  society 
that  Roman  Law  destroyed. 

It  would  be  fortunate  for  us  if  this  simple  truth  could 
become  acknowledged,  as  no  single  thing  would  be  wrought 
with  such  far-reaching  consequences  and  prevent  so  much 
human  suffering.  A  frank  acceptance  of  the  principle  of 

1  This  fact  is  hidden  from  the  modern  world  by  current  theories  of 
social  evolution  which,  ignoring  the  legal  origin  of  economic  phenomena, 
present  the  change  from  feudalism  to  landlordism  and  capitalism  as  the  con¬ 
sequence  of  impersonal  economic  forces  instead  of  to  definite  acts  of  the 
human  will. 


298 


The  Path  to  the  Guilds 


299 


reversion  would  enable  us  to  arrive  at  the  new  social  order 
by  means  of  orderly  progression,  and  would  prevent  the 
bloodshed  that  is  the  inevitable  consequence  of  a  refusal 
to  face  the  facts.  The  danger  that  confronts  us  is  precisely 
the  same  as  confronted  France  on  the  eve  of  the  Revolution. 
It  is  the  danger  that  a  popular  though  unconscious  move¬ 
ment  back  to  Medisevalism  may  be  frustrated  by  intellectuals 
whose  eyes  are  turned  in  the  opposite  direction,  and  re¬ 
volution  be  precipitated  by  the  fact  that  the  instinctive 
impulses  of  the  people,  instead  of  being  guided  into  their 
proper  channels  where  they  would  bear  fruit  a  thousandfold, 
will  be  brought  into  collision  with  doctrinaire  idealists  who 
believe  in  economic  evolution  as  it  is  not.  The  average 
man  to-day  in  his  conscious  intelligence  will  subscribe  to 
modernism  in  some  degree,  but  his  instinctive  actions  are 
alwavs  in  the  direction  of  a  return  to  Medievalism.  This 
fact  is  illustrated  by  the  arrival  of  the  Trade  Union  Move¬ 
ment,  which  was  well  described  by  Mr.  Chesterton  as  “  a 
return  to  the  past  by  men  ignorant  of  the  past,  like  the 
subconscious  action  of  some  man  who  has  lost  his  memory." 
The  circumstance  that  the  Guild  propaganda  finds  such 
ready  support  among  Trade  Unionists  is  not  due  to  the 
economic  theories  associated  with  it.  Such  could  not  be 
the  case,  for  not  one  person  in  a  thousand  understands 
economics.  The  Guild  idea  is  successful  because  it  is  in 
harmony  with  the  popular  psychology.  It  attacks  the 
wage  system  and  directs  attention  to  the  danger  of  the 
Servile  State — evils  with  which  every  working  man  is 
familiar — while  it  presents  him  with  a  vision  of  a  new  social 
order  in  which  he  may  take  pleasure  in  his  work.  These 
are  the  things  that  have  promoted  the  success  of  the  Guild 
idea.  Approving  of  such  aims,  the  majority  are  willing  to 
take  its  economics  for  granted  as  things  beyond  their  under¬ 
standing.  They  swallow  them  without  tasting  them  ;  just 
as  a  previous  generation  swallowed  Collectivist  theories 
without  tasting  them  because  Socialists  held  out  promises 
of  a  co-operative  commonwealth.  Those  who  deny  this 
contention  must  explain  why,  if  such  was  not  the  case. 
Socialists  rebelled  against  Collectivism  when  they  discovered 
where  it  was  leading  them.  If  they  had  understood  its 


300  A  Guildsmari s  Interpretation  of  History 


economic  theories  they  would  have  known  its  destination 
all  along,  and  would  no  more  have  thought  about  rebelling 
against  it  than  does  Mr.  Sidney  Webb.  Mr.  Webb  does  not 
rebel  against  it,  because  he  understands  it.  I  am  inclined 
to  think  he  is  the  only  man  who  understands  Collectivism 
and  believes  in  it.  At  any  rate  he  is  the  only  Collectivist 
I  ever  met  who  was  prepared  to  accept  the  deductions  from 
his  premises. 

While  on  the  one  hand  we  have  in  the  Trade  Union 
Movement  evidence  of  an  instinctive  effort  by  men  to  return 
to  Medievalism  in  their  capacity  as  producers,  we  have  in 
the  present  outcry  against  profiteering  and  the  demand 
for  a  fixed  and  Just  Price  evidence  of  an  instinctive  effort 
of  men  to  return  to  Medievalism  in  their  capacity  as  con¬ 
sumers.  It  is  important  that  this  should  be  recognized, 
for  the  Trade  Union  Movement  and  the  movement  against 
profiteering  are  the  upper  and  nether  millstones  between 
which  capitalism  is  going  to  be  ground  and  the  Guilds 
restored.  The  movement  against  profiteering,  again,  is  not 
due  to  any  leanings  towards  Mediaeval  economics.  On 
the  contrary,  it  is  purely  instinctive.  Just  as  the  Trade 
Union  Movement  owes  its  origin  to  the  instinct  of  self- 
preservation  of  producers,  so  the  demand  for  the  Just  Price 
owes  its  origin  to  the  instinct  of  self-preservation  of  con¬ 
sumers.  Yet  both  are  movements  back  to  Medievalism. 
And  so  in  respect  to  all  of  our  other  ideas  of  reform  :  they 
all  imply  reversion  to  the  past.  What  is  democracy  but 
a  form  of  government  that  existed  among  all  primitive 
peoples  ?  What  is  the  proposal  to  nationalize  the  land 
but  a  reversion  to  the  oldest  known  form  of  land  tenure  ? 
What  is  the  demand  for  a  more  equitable  distribution  of 
wealth  but  a  reversion  to  pre-capitalist  conditions  of  society  ? 
What  does  the  substitution  of  production  for  use  for  pro¬ 
duction  for  profit  and  the  abolition  of  poverty  imply  but 
the  reversion  to  a  state  of  things  that  existed  before  such 
evils  came  into  existence  ?  They  are  all  borrowed  from 
the  past,  and  imply  the  creation  of  a  social  order  the  exact 
antithesis  of  our  present  one.  But  our  reformers  will  not 
have  it.  They  do  not  take  the  trouble  to  carry  their  ideas 
to  their  logical  conclusion,  and  so  continue  to  imagine  that 


The  Path  to  the  Guilds 


301 


all  such  ideas  may  be  grafted  upon  modern  industrialism 
and  finance  which  is  built  upon  their  denial  and  is  finally 
antipathetic  to  them.  The  result  is  as  might  be  expected. 
Modern  attempts  at  reform  invariably  produce  the  opposite 
effect  to  that  intended,  or  if  they  remedy  one  evil,  it  is  but 
to  create  another.  Instead  of  being  stepping-stones  to 
the  millennium,  they  prove  to  be  the  paved  way  to  the 
Servile  State.  The  discovery  of  this  leads  the  workers  to 
rebel ;  they  become  suspicious  of  intellectual  leadership, 
and  generally  speaking  the  suspicion  is  justified,  for  the 
intellectuals  have  misled  them.  Their  prejudice  against 
the  past  is  the  root  of  the  whole  trouble.  If  we  could  get 
rid  of  this  prejudice  it  would  be  easy  to  bridge  the  gulf 
between  the  workers  and  intellectuals.  They  would  pull 
together,  and  we  should  get  real  leadership  because  we 
should  get  understanding.  It  is  easy  to  understand  the 
modern  world  if  you  visualize  it  from  the  Medievalist 
standpoint,  but  impossible  from  the  modernist,  as  the  con¬ 
stant  change  of  intellectual  fashions  clearly  demonstrates. 
Yet  though  the  modernist  can  find  certainty  nowhere,  he 
still  clings  tenaciously  to  the  belief  that  modernism  cannot 
be  entirely  wrong. 

But  even  when  the  modernist  is  convinced  of  the  truth 
of  Mediaeval  principles  he  hesitates  to  give  them  his 
adherence  because  he  experiences  a  difficulty  in  basing  any 
practical  activity  upon  them.  But  that  is  only  a  temporary 
difficulty,  and  would  disappear  if  Mediaeval  principles  were 
more  generally  accepted.  Still  that  is  not  the  issue  for 
which  we  are  immediately  contending.  The  vital  issue 
is  not  finally  whether  Mediaeval  principles  can  be  applied 
in  detail,  but  that  the  neglect  of  them  leads  modernists 
to  put  their  trust  in  measures  that  are  foredoomed  to 
failure,  while  it  blinds  them  to  the  significance  of  move¬ 
ments  of  popular  origin  because  of  false  a  priori  ideas.  It 
would  be  just  as  unreasonable  for  an  engineer  to  ignore  the 
laws  of  physics  because  he  found  it  difficult  to  apply  them 
with  mathematical  precision  in  a  complex  structure  as  it 
is  for  Socialists  to  ignore  Mediaeval  economics  because  they 
cannot  always  be  immediately  applied.  For  just  as  a 
knowledge  of  the  laws  of  physics  keeps  the  engineer  straight 


302  A  Guildsmari’s  Interpretation  of  History 


within  certain  limits  by  telling  him  what  can  and  what 
cannot  be  done,  so  a  knowledge  of  Mediaeval  economics 
would  keep  Socialists  straight  within  certain  limits,  and 
by  relating  all  their  schemes  to  a  central  and  co-ordinating 
philosophy  prevent  them  from  making  fundamental  errors. 
It  is  precisely  because  men  who  become  immersed  in  the 
details  of  politics  are  apt  to  lose  sight  of  first  principles 
that  it  is  so  necessary  to  keep  insisting  upon  them.  Above 
all,  a  familiarity  with  the  Mediaeval  philosophy  and  point 
of  view  would  give  them  some  insight  into  the  psychology 
of  the  people,  who,  in  spite  of  all  appearances  to  the  con¬ 
trary,  are  Mediaevalists  still. 

It  is  because  I  feel  so  much  the  desirability  of  a 
rapprochement  between  intellectuals  and  the  workers  that 
I  so  strongly  urge  the  importance  of  Mediaeval  ideas. 
The  tragedy  of  the  situation  is  that  we  live  in  an  age  that 
cries  out  for  leadership  and  no  leaders  are  forthcoming, 
nor  are  there  likely  to  be  any  so  long  as  the  modernist 
philosophy  prevails,  since  it  erects  an  insurmountable 
barrier  between  the  workers  and  their  rightful  leaders. 
Here  I  would  observe  that  my  comments  are  just  as  true 
of  working-class  intellectuals  as  of  those  of  the  middle  class, 
for  the  working  class  that  reads  has  been  fed  on  the  self¬ 
same  false  philosophies.  In  so  far  as  working-class  culture 
differs  from  middle-class  culture,  it  is  apt  to  be  harder  and 
narrower  ;  this  is  where  the  real  danger  lies.  When  I  say 
that  the  danger  confronting  us  is  precisely  the  same  as 
that  which  confronted  France  on  the  eve  of  the  Revolution 
— in  that  chaos  may  be  precipitated  by  the  fact  that  the 
workers  and  the  intellectuals  are  pulling  different  ways — 
it  is  to  working-class  rather  than  middle-class  intellectuals 
that  I  refer,  since  the  neo-Marxian  intellectuals  are  the 
only  modernists  sufficiently  convinced  of  the  truth  of  their 
creed  to  be  capable  of  determined  action  in  the  event  of 
a  crisis.  The  leadership  must  fall  into  their  hands,  unless 
in  the  meantime  the  Medievalist  position  can  secure  wide 
acceptance,  since  apart  from  such  acceptance  reformers 
generally  will  remain  blind  to  the  significance  of  present- 
day  developments  that  are  finally  the  result  of  their  teach¬ 
ing,  but  which  do  not  receive  recognition  because  they 


The  Path  to  the  Guilds 


303 


come  in  unexpected  forms  from  unexpected  quarters.  We 
look  to  things  coming  to  us  from  the  east  and  they  come  to 
us  from  the  west.  And  so  the  very  things  which  might 
remove  impossible  barriers  from  our  path  are  treated  with 
suspicion  and  rejected. 

The  Profiteering  Act  is  a  case  in  point.  Owing  to  the 
fact  that  the  minds  of  Socialists  are  filled  with  the  a  priori 
theory  of  social  evolution,  which  teaches  them  that  industry 
is  to  get  into  fewer  and  fewer  hands  until  a  time  comes  at 
length  when  it  will  be  taken  over  by  the  State,  they  have 
entirely  missed  the  significance  of  this  Act,  which  points 
to  a  very  different  conclusion.  From  the  point  of  view 
of  the  average  Socialist  it  is  nothing  more  than  a  measure 
of  temporary  expediency  advocated  by  the  Northcliffe 
Press  and  adopted  by  the  Government  as  a  means  of  satis¬ 
fying  popular  clamour  and  of  postponing  the  day  of  sub¬ 
stantial  reform.  But  to  the  Guildsman  it  wears  a  different 
aspect.  While  he  is  not  prepared  to  dispute  that  such 
motives  led  to  its  enactment,  he  sees  in  the  effort  to  fix 
prices  a  revival  of  the  central  economic  idea  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  History  teaches  him  it  is  an  idea  with  great  poten¬ 
tialities  and  may,  if  advantage  is  taken  of  it  by  reformers, 
lead  to  results  very  different  from  those  intended.  The  control 
of  prices,  he  is  persuaded,  is  a  precedent  condition  of  success 
in  any  effort  to  secure  economic  reform,  inasmuch  as  until 
prices  are  fixed  it  is  impossible  to  plan  or  arrange  anything 
that  may  not  be  subsequently  upset  by  fluctuations  of  the 
markets.  It  is  a  necessary  preliminary  to  secure  the  un¬ 
earned  increment  for  the  community,  since  until  prices 
are  fixed  it  will  always  be  possible  for  the  rich  to  resist 
attempts  to  reduce  them  by  transferring  any  taxation 
imposed  upon  them  to  the  shoulders  of  other  members  of 
the  community.  Moreover,  as  the  Profiteering  Act  seeks 
the  co-operation  of  local  authorities,  it  should  operate  to 
promote  a  revival  of  local  life.  Where  local  authorities 
have  fallen  into  the  hands  of  shopkeepers,  the  shopkeepers 
will  be  compelled  to  act  in  the  public  interest  or  be  cleared 
out.  Thus  the  moral  issue  will  become  one  of  paramount 
importance,  and  this  will  pave  the  way  for  the  arrival  of 
the  Just  Price,  for  the  people  will  never  be  satisfied  with 


304  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


a  fixed  price  that  is  not  finally  a  Just  Price.  As  in  the 
Middle  Ages  the  Guilds  owed  their  existence  as  economic 
organizations  to  the  desire  for  a  Just  Price,  it  is  reasonable 
to  suppose  that  once  the  Government  is  committed  to  a 
policy  of  regulating  prices  the  restoration  of  the  Guilds 
can  only  be  a  matter  of  time.  Apart  from  Guilds,  it  may 
be  possible  to  fix  the  prices  of  a  few  staple  articles  of  general 
use,  but  experience  must  prove  that  this  is  as  far  as  things 
will  go,  for  there  is  a  limit  to  the  successful  application 
of  the  principle  of  control  from  without.  The  fixing  of 
prices  throughout  industry  necessitates  control  from  within, 
and  this  involves  a  return  to  the  Guilds. 

But  the  Profiteering  Act  has  other  implications.  It 
raises  the  questions  of  agriculture,  landlordism  and  Roman 
Law.  It  is  evident  that  any  fixing  of  prices  throughout 
industry  depends  ultimately  upon  our  capacity  to  fix  the 
price  of  food,  and  this  must  remain  impossible  so  long  as 
we  are  dependent  upon  foreign  supplies  of  food.  Hence 
the  attempt  to  fix  prices  leads  to  the  revival  of  agriculture. 
The  question  as  to  whether  with  our  large  population  we 
shall  or  shall  not  ever  be  able  to  be  entirely  independent 
of  such  supplies  is  not  the  issue.  We  should  aim  at  being 
as  independent  as  possible,  since  the  nearer  we  approach 
to  such  a  condition,  the  more  stable  our  economic  arrange¬ 
ments  will  become.  The  movement  towards  such  a  revival 
should  be  reinforced  by  the  national  urgency  of  correcting 
the  discrepancy  between  imports  and  exports.  Before  the 
war,  the  excess  of  imports  was  a  matter  of  no  concern,  as 
it  represented  the  returns  on  our  foreign  investments  and 
the  earnings  of  our  mercantile  marine,  but  nowadays,  when 
our  foreign  investments  have  been  sold  to  pay  for  munitions 
and  our  mercantile  marine  reduced,  it  is  a  different  matter. 
It  means  we  are  living  on  capital,  that  the  country  is  being 
drained  of  its  economic  resources,  and  that  this  discrepancy 
must  be  corrected  if  we  are  to  avoid  national  bankruptcy. 
The  politician  and  industrialist,  looking  at  this  problem, 
cry  aloud  for  increased  production,  meaning  thereby  an 
increase  in  the  production  of  industrial  wares.  But  this, 
as  I  have  shown,  is  no  solution,  for  the  markets  of  the  world 
cannot  absorb  an  increased  production.  Yet  there  is  a 


The  Path  to  the  Guilds 


80  5 


sense  in  which  they  are  right.  We  do  not  want  an  increase 
of  secondary  production  such  as  they  urge  upon  us,  but 
we  do  need  an  increase  of  primary  production.  We  need 

Ian  increase  of  agricultural  produce.  This  is  the  one  direction 
in  which  an  increase  of  output  is  immediately  practicable, 
and  it  would  react  to  our  economic  advantage.  For  not 
only  would  it,  by  decreasing  our  imports  of  food,  tend  to 
correct  the  balance  between  imports  and  exports,  but  it 
would  provide  an  increased  home  market  for  our  industrial 
wares.  It  would  increase  our  national  independence  and 
lay  for  us  a  firm  economic  base  on  which  we  could  proceed 
to  build.  We  could  then  begin  to  fix  prices  with  some 
assurance  that  what  we  did  would  not  be  upset  by  the 
action  of  some  Food  Trust  beyond  the  seas.  The  fleeting 
nature  of  the  prosperity  built  upon  foreign  trade  is  in  these 
days  being  brought  home  to  us.  The  experience  of  Carthage 
and  Athens,  of  Venice  and  Genoa,  of  Hanseatic  Germany 
and  of  the  Dutch,  is  becoming  our  experience.  A  time 
came  in  the  life  of  these  States  when  they  found  themselves 
at  the  mercy  of  forces  they  were  powerless  to  control, 
and  so  it  is  with  us.  There  is  no  way  out  of  the  impasse 
in  which  we  find  ourselves  but  to  restore  to  society  the  base 
that  was  destroyed  by  the  tyranny  of  landlordism  on  the  one 
hand  and  the  shibboleth  of  Free  Trade  on  the  other.  If 
a  revival  of  agriculture  is  to  be  of  real  benefit  to  society, 

(life  in  the  country  must  be  made  attractive  again  and  the 
agricultural  worker  be  properly  paid,  and  I  would  add  he 
should  not  be  paid  less  than  the  equivalent  of  what  he  was 
able  to  earn  in  the  Middle  Ages,  which  at  the  pre-war  value 
of  money  would  not  be  less  than  three  pounds  a  week.  No 
doubt  this  will  appear  entirely  impracticable  to  our 
“  practical  ”  reformers  whose  habit  of  mind  it  is  to  put 
expediency  before  principle.  But  I  am  assured  that  the 
great  increase  of  demand  in  the  home  market  created  by 
such  well-paid  workers  would  speedily  react  to  the  advan¬ 
tage  of  the  community  by  relieving  the  pressure  of  com¬ 
petition  in  the  towns.  We  should  soon  find  that  a  prosperous 
peasantry  was  our  greatest  economic  asset.  Raising  the 
wages  of  agricultural  workers  would,  moreover,  by  putting 
the  labourers  on  their  feet,  pave  the  way  for  the  organization 

20 


306  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


of  agriculture  on  a  Guild  basis.  As  an  intermediate  step, 
however,  it  would  perhaps  be  necessary  to  work  for  small 
holdings  and  restored  common  lands,  a  combination  of 
which  would  not  unlikely  prove  to  be  the  most  satisfactory 
form  of  land-holding.  But  in  no  case  should  ownership 
of  land  be  absolute.  On  the  contrary,  land  should  be  held 
conditionally  upon  its  cultivation  and  owned  by  the  local 
authorities,  an  arrangement  I  suggest  as  an  alternative 
to  land  nationalization  because  it  avoids  the  evils  of 
bureaucracy. 

So  self-evident  may  appear  the  policy  I  recommend 
that  the  question  naturally  arises,  Why  is  it  not  adopted  ? 
The  answer  is  because  the  revival  of  agriculture  raises  the 
land  question',  and  that  touches  the  governing  class  in  a 
very  tender  place.  The  outcry  that  any  proposal  to  tax 
the  land  immediately  raises  is  not  due  to  the  fact  that  it 
touches  the  wealthy  in  their  economic  stronghold,  for 
the  money  power  is  in  these  days  infinitely  more  powerful 
than  the  land  power,  but  because  it  attacks  the  honour 
of  the  governing  class.  All  the  great  landowners  are  in 
possession  of  stolen  property,  and  it  is  said  that  a  great 
part  of  such  lands  have  no  proper  title-deeds.  When  Mr. 
Smillie  raised  this  question  at  the  recent  Coal  Commission 
he  raised  a  very  pertinent  one.  But  he  neglected  a  stronger 
line  of  attack.  Instead  of  asking  whether  the  lands  held 
by  the  dukes  had  proper  title-deeds,  he  ought  to  have  asked 
how  it  came  about  that  any  land  possessed  title-deeds ; 
whether  it  was  in  the  interests  of  the  community  for  men 
to  enjoy  privileges  without  corresponding  responsibilities  ; 
and  how  it  came  about  that  landlords  found  themselves 
in  this  irresponsible  position  to-day.  These  questions  would 
have  raised  the  really  fundamental  issues ;  for  no  men 
were  in  this  position  before  the  revival  of  Roman  Law. 

It  has  been  the  misfortune  of  the  land  question  that 
its  fundamental  importance  has  been  disregarded  because 
it  has  been  associated  with  moribund  solutions  of  its  problems. 
Every  one  with  a  practical  knowledge  of  the  circumstances 
of  agriculture  and  building  knew  very  well  that  the  taxation 
of  land  values,  though  theoretically  justifiable,  would  be 
followed  by  consequences  very  different  from  those  intended. 


The  Path  to  the  Guilds 


807 


We  are  paying  in  the  housing  shortage  to-day  for  the  Land 
Campaign  of  1909 — a  fact  that  has  been  obscured  by  the 
circumstance  that  the  war  has  rendered  cottage-building 
an  uneconomic  proposition.  If  land  reformers  had  been 
as  keen  on  reviving  agriculture,  for  which  they  professed 
concern,  as  they  were  for  securing  the  unearned  increment 
of  city  sites,  they  would  never  have  fallen  into  the  economic 
fallacies  they  did,  for  in  that  case  they  would  have  begun 
by  enquiring  into  the  circumstances  of  agriculture,  and 
have  made  its  revival  their  primary  concern.  But  it  has 
unfortunately  happened  that  while  agricultural  reformers 
have  shirked  the  land  question,  those  who  have  attacked 
it  have  had  their  eyes  fixed  upon  urban  values.  So  land 
reform  has  fallen  between  two  stools,  and  will  remain  so 
until  the  reformers  wake  up  to  the  fact  that  the  land 
question  is  fundamental  to  all  their  schemes. 

It  is  a  paradox,  but  I  believe  it  is  nevertheless  true, 
that  it  is  this  tradition  of  reformers  approaching  the  problem 
of  reconstruction  from  the  point  of  view  of  unearned  incre¬ 
ment,  or  surplus  value,  to  use  Marxian  terminology,  that 
in  the  past  has  been  their  undoing.  With  their  eyes  for  ever 
fixed  on  the  money  that  goes  into  the  pockets  of  others 
who  have  no  moral  right  to  it,  they  incline  to  approach 
problems  in  a  ruthless  mechanical  way  that  entirely  dis¬ 
regards  circumstances.  These  circumstances  in  turn  have 
a  way  of  defeating  them,  for  problems  are  to  be  attacked 
along  the  line  of  their  growth  and  finally  in  no  other  way. 
The  root  fallacy  that  leads  reformers  to  be  thus  for  ever 
attacking  problems  in  the  wrong  way  is  that  they  have 
fallen  into  the  error  of  making  economics  rather  than  law 
and  morals  the  starting-point  of  their  enquiries.  It  is 
this  that  has  led  them  to  the  Collectivist  way  of  thinking, 
that  supposes  the  solution  of  the  social  problem  to  be 
nothing  more  than  a  matter  of  detailed  arrangements — a 
way  of  thinking  that  has  survived  the  formal  rejection  of 
Collectivist  theories,  and  which  is  still  believed  in  by  the 
neo-Marxians.  For  their  quarrel  with  the  Fabians,  as 
with  us,  is  immediately  a  quarrel  about  time.  Without 
any  conception  of  the  organic  nature  of  society,  they  demand 
an  immediate  solution  of  its  problems  They  want  the 


308  A  Guildsman' s  Interpretation  of  History 


millennium  at  once,  and  have  no  patience  with  us  because 
we  do  not  believe  it  possible  to  improvise  a  new  social 
system  the  day  after  the  revolution.  Though  they  profess 
to  take  their  stand  upon  history,  they  are  strangely  oblivious 
to  its  lessons.  For  if  there  is  one  lesson  more  than  another 
that  it  teaches,  it  is  that  organic  changes  are  not  brought 
about  in  a  catastrophic  way.  On  the  contrary,  catastrophes, 
in  which  history  abounds,  are  invariably  followed  by  long 
periods  of  social  disorder  and  chaos,  and  only  indirectly 
can  be  said  to  lead  to  any  kind  of  good,  in  that  experience 
proves  that  men  will  often  listen  to  the  voice  of  truth  in 
suffering  that  they  scorned  in  their  days  of  prosperity. 
Yet  the  neo-Marxians  are  so  eager  for  the  millennium  that 
they  seek  catastrophe  as  a  means  of  realizing  it. 

There  is  another  lesson  that  history  teaches  that  the 
Marxians  do  not  so  much  ignore  as  deny — that  evils  are 
never  conquered  before  they  are  understood  and  faced  in 
the  right  spirit.  The  history  of  Greece  and  Rome  abounds 
in  revolutions,  but  the  revolutionaries  were  unable  to  abolish 
the  evils  consequent  upon  an  unregulated  currency,  because 
they  did  not  understand  how  to  suppress  them.  Plato 
might  realize  that  the  technical  remedy  was  to  be  found 
in  a  system  of  fixed  prices,  but  the  moral  atmosphere  neces¬ 
sary  to  reduce  such  an  idea  to  practice  was  absent  in  Greek 
society,  and  so  his  suggestion  was  ignored.  It  was  not 
until  Christianity  had  entirely  transformed  the  spirit  of 
society  by  replacing  the  individualistic  temper  of  Pagan 
society  by  the  spirit  of  human  brotherhood  that  a  solution 
was  found  in  the  institution  of  the  Just  Price  as  maintained 
by  the  Guilds.  Similarly  the  transition  from  Mediaeval 
to  modern  society,  from  communism  to  individualism,  did 
not  come  about  owing  to  some  inexorable  law  of  social 
evolution,  but  because  the  moral  sanction  of  Mediaeval 
society  was  gradually  undermined  by  the  lawyers  and 
their  Roman  Law.  They  undermined  the  communal  spirit 
that  sustained  the  Guilds  by  affirming  the  right  of  every 
man  to  buy  in  the  cheapest  market  and  to  sell  in  the  dearest, 
while  they  transformed  Feudalism  into  landlordism  by 
denying  the  Mediaeval  theory  of  reciprocal  rights  and  duties, 
and  exalting  the  rights  of  the  individual  at  the  expense 


The  Path  to  the  Guilds 


309 


of  those  of  the  community.  What  Marxians  call  social 
evolution  is  nothing  more  or  less  than  the  social  and 
economic  consequences  of  such  teaching — a  truth  which 
even  they  instinctively  recognize,  for  they  are  not  content 
to  leave  the  coming  of  the  millennium  to  the  blind  workings 
of  the  historic  process  about  which  they  are  so  eloquent, 
but  seek  to  promote  it  by  inculcating  the  doctrines  of  class- 
consciousness  into  the  minds  of  the  workers.  There  is 
nothing  inevitable  about  social  changes.  The  direction  can 
at  any  time  be  changed  where  there  is  the  will  and  the 
understanding.  But  for  the  revival  of  Roman  Law  and 
the  immoral  teachings  associated  with  it,  European  society 
would  have  continued  to  develop  on  Mediaeval  lines  to  this 
day  as  indeed  it  continued  to  develop  in  Asia  and  remained 
until  European  capitalism  began  to  undermine  it. 

Recognizing,  then,  that  all  societies  are  finally  the 
expression  or  materialization  of  their  dominant  philosophy, 
and  that  when  in  the  Middle  Ages  communal  relationships 
obtained  they  were  sustained  by  the  teachings  of  Chris¬ 
tianity,  the  question  may  reasonably  be  asked  whether  the 
policy  we  advocate  does  not  imply  a  return  to  Christianity  ; 
must  not  reformers  return  to  the  churches  ?  The  answer 
is  that  this  would  be  the  case  if  the  churches  taught 
Christianity  as  it  was  understood  by  the  Early  Christians. 
But  such  is  not  the  case.  The  churches  in  the  past  made 
terms  with  the  mammon  of  unrighteousness,  and  though 
it  is  true  that  they  are  changing,  we  have  to  recognize  that 
they  are  changing  in  response  to  the  rebellion  against 
capitalism  from  without  rather  than  from  any  movement 
from  within — at  any  rate  in  so  far  as  their  attitude  towards 
social  questions  is  concerned.  If  the  churches  had  taken 
the  lead  in  attacking  capitalism,  there  would  be  a  case 
for  joining  them,  but  considering  that  they  did  not,  and 
are  so  much  bound  up  with  the  existing  order,  to  advocate 
such  a  policy  would  not  only  lead  to  endless  misunder¬ 
standing,  but  would  hamper  us  in  the  immediate  work 
that  requires  to  be  done.  Hitherto  Guildsmen  have  ap¬ 
proached  the  problem  from  one  particular  angle.  They 
have  sought  to  transform  the  Trade  Unions  into  Guilds 
by  urging  upon  the  latter  a  policy  of  encroaching  control. 


310  A  GuildsmarCs  Interpretation  of  History 


This  policy  is  good  as  far  as  it  goes.  But  it  is  not  the  only 
thing  that  requires  to  be  done.  It  is  not  only  necessary 
to  approach  the  problem  of  establishing  Guilds  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  producer ;  it  is  equally  necessary 
to  approach  it  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  consumer. 
For  this  reason  I  would  urge  that  we  should  not  neglect 
the  new  weapon  that  the  Profiteering  Act  has  placed  in 
our  hands.  Let  us  recognize  the  significance  of  this  Act 
as  giving  legal  sanction  to  the  central  economic  idea  of  the 
Middle  Ages.  Let  us  study  its  implications  and  make 
the  working  of  the  Act  the  basis  of  activities  that  will  lead 
step  by  step  on  the  one  hand  to  the  revival  of  agriculture 
and  the  abolition  of  landlordism,  and  on  the  other  to  the 
return  of  the  Guilds.  For  if  the  public  can  be  persuaded 
of  the  desirability  of  Guilds  from  the  point  of  view  of  con¬ 
sumers,  half  our  battle  would  be  won.  The  movement 
from  above  would  join  hands  with  the  movement  from 
below  and  Guilds  arise  naturally  from  the  union. 

Meanwhile  those  whom  personal  bias  leads  to  a  con¬ 
sideration  of  the  more  fundamental  propositions  underlying 
the  problem  of  reconstruction  should  be  urged  to  concentrate 
their  energies  upon  the  abolition  of  Roman  Law.  Such  an 
attack  would  tend  to  create  the  kind  of  intellectual  back¬ 
ground  of  which  the  Reform  Movement  stands  so  much  in 
need.  It  would  in  the  first  place  prevent  the  Guild  Move¬ 
ment  from  getting  side-tracked  by  counteracting  the  per¬ 
nicious  influence  of  the  Marxian  interpretation  of  history. 
In  the  next  it  would  impress  upon  the  minds  of  people  the 
idea  that  social  and  economic  changes  are  preceded  by 
changes  in  ideas.  Then  it  would  demonstrate  the  primacy 
of  law  over  economics  ;  and  lastly  it  would  bring  Mediaeval 
ideas  into  a  direct  relationship  with  the  modern  thought, 
because  it  so  happens  that  it  is  impossible  to  attack  Roman 
Law  without  at  the  same  time  affirming  Mediaeval  principles.1 

1  In  Authority,  Liberty  and  Function,  by  Ramiro  de  Maeztu  (Allen  & 
Unwin),  the  antithesis  between  Roman  and  Mediaeval  Law  is  carried  further 
by  showing  that  whereas  Roman  Law  is  subjective  in  conception,  Mediaeval 
Law  is  objective,  and  the  issue  is  widened  by  showing  that  all  our  ideas 
from  Renaissance  times  onward  have  become  increasingly  subjective.  It 
is  a  book  which  I  cannot  too  strongly  recommend  to  my  readers,  as  it  is  one 
to  which  I  feel  I  owe  much. 


■JliBBU  ^  - 


The  Path  to  the  Guilds 


311 


Law  is  the  link  between  morals  and  economics  as  it  is 
between  philosophy  and  politics  and  between  industrialism 
and  militarism.  To  attack  Roman  Law  is  therefore  to 
attack  the  modern  system  at  a  very  vital  and  strategic 
point.  It  would  create  a  force  that  would  restore  the 
communal  spirit  of  the  Middle  Ages.  For  after  all  there 
are  only  two  types  of  society  that  have  existed  since  currency 
was  introduced — the  capitalist  civilizations  of  Greece  and 
Rome  and  of  modern  Europe  and  America  that  did  not 
control  currency,  and  the  communal  societies  of  Mediaeval 
Europe  and  Asia  that  did.  There  is,  finally,  no  third  type 
of  society,  inasmuch  as  all  societies  conform  to  one  or  other 
of  these  types,  differing  only  to  the  extent  that  in  different 
societies  emphasis  is  given  to  different  aspects  of  them. 
Hence  it  is  reasonable  to  suppose  that  as  the  capitalist 
civilization  of  Rome  was  followed  by  the  communal  civil¬ 
ization  of  Medievalism,  the  reaction  against  capitalism 
to-day  will  carry  us  along  to  a  future  where  the  promise 
of  the  Middle  Ages  will  be  fulfilled. 


PRINCIPAL  BOOKS  CONSULTED 


Fowler,  W.  Warde 
Jones,  H.  Stuart  . 
Liddell,  Henry  S. 
Nitti,  Francesco  S. 
Schmitz,  Leonhard 
Zimmern,  Alfred  E. 


Ashley,  W.  J.  . 

Brentano,  L. 
Lambert,  J.  M.  . 
Lipson,  E. 

Noel,  Conrad  . 


Ashley,  W.  J.  . 

Gierke,  Otto 
Janssen,  Johannes  E. 

O’Neill,  H.  C.  . 


Janssen,  Johannes  E. 

Jenks,  Edward 
Maeztu,  Ramiro  de 
Maine,  Sir  Henry 
Maitland,  F.  W. 

Rashdall,  Hastings  . 
Vinogradoff,  Sir  Paul 


CHAPTER  I 
Rome 

The  Roman  Empire 
History  of  Rome 
Catholic  Socialism 
History  of  Greece 
The  Greek  Commonwealth 


CHAPTER  II 

An  Introduction  to  English  Economic  History 
and  Theory 

History  and  Development  of  Gilds 
Two  Thousand  Years  of  Guild  Life 
An  Introduction  to  the  Economic  History  of 
England 

Socialism  in  Church  History 


CHAPTER  III 

An  Introduction  to  English  Economic  History 
and  Theory 

Political  Theories  of  the  Middle  Ages 
History  of  the  German  People  at  the  Close 
of  the  Middle  Ages 

New  Things  and  Old  in  St.  Thomas  Aquinas 
Cambridge  Modern  History 


CHAPTER  IV 

History  of  the  German  People  at  the  Close 
of  the  Middle  Ages 
Law  and  Politics  in  the  Middle  Ages 
Authority,  Liberty  and  Function 
Ancient  Law 

Introduction  to  Gierke’s  Political  Theories  of 
the  Middle  Ages 

The  Universities  of  Europe  in  the  Middle  Ages 
Roman  Law  in  Mediaeval  Europe 
312 


Books  Consulted 


313 


CHAPTER  V 


Ashley,  W.  J . An  Introduction  to  English  Economic  History 

and  Theory 

Gooch,  G.  P . Political  Thought  in  England  from  Bacon  to 

Halifax 

Green,  J.  R . History  of  the  English  People 

Jarrett,  Bede  ....  Mediaeval  Socialism 


Vinogradoff,  Sir  Paul  .  Roman  Law  in  Mediaeval  Europe 


Bussell,  F.  W. 


Gibbon,  Edward 
Nitti,  Francesco  S. 
Pauli,  Reinhold 


CHAPTER  VI 

Religious  Thought  and  Heresy  in  the  Middle 
Ages 

The  Cambridge  Mediaeval  History 
Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire 
Catholic  Socialism 
Pictures  of  Old  England 


CHAPTER  VII 


Janssen,  Johannes  E. 

Pauli,  Reinhold  . 
Rashdall,  Hastings  . 
Walsh,  J.  J.  . 


History  of  the  German  People  at  the  Close 
of  the  Middle  Ages 
Pictures  of  Old  England 

The  Universities  of  Europe  in  the  Middle  Ages 
The  Popes  and  Science 


Lethaby,  W.  R. 
Morris,  William 

Ruskin,  John  . 


CHAPTER  VIII 

Mediaeval  Art 
.  Gothic  Architecture 

Architecture,  Industry  and  Wealth 
.  The  Stones  of  Venice 

Seven  Lamps  of  Architecture 


Anderson,  W.  J. 
Blomfield,  R.  T. 


Gotch,  J.  A. 
Pater,  Walter 
Ruskin,  John  . 
Sabatier,  Paul 
Symonds,  J.  A.  . 


CHAPTER  IX 

The  Architecture  of  the  Renaissance  in  Italy 
A  History  of  Renaissance  Architecture  in 
England 

The  Cambridge  Modern  History,  vol.  i. 

Early  Renaissance  Architecture  in  England 

The  Renaissance 

Stones  of  Venice 

Life  of  St.  Francis  of  Assisi 

Renaissance  in  Italy 


314  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


CHAPTER  X 

Agate,  Leonard  D.  .  .  Luther  and  the  Reformation 

The  Cambridge  Modern  History 

Janssen,  Johannes  E.  .  .  History  of  the  German  People  at  the  Close 

of  the  Middle  Ages 


CHAPTERS  XI  and  XII 


Cobbett,  William 
Cunningham,  W. 

Lingard,  John  . 
Tawney,  R.  H.  . 


A  History  of  the  Protestant  Reformation 
The  Growth  of  English  Industry  and  Com¬ 
merce 

The  History  of  England 

The  Agrarian  Problem  in  the  Sixteenth 
Century 

The  Cambridge  Modern  History 


Kropotkin,  P.  A. 
Belloc,  Hilaire 
Bon,  Gustave  le  . 

Mignet,  F.  A.  . 
Thiers,  L.  A. 

Tozer,  Henry  J.  . 


CHAPTER  XIII 

The  Great  French  Revolution 
The  French  Revolution 
Psychology  of  Revolution 
The  Cambridge  Modern  History 
History  of  the  French  Revolution 
The  History  of  the  French  Revolution 
Translation  of  Rousseau’s  Social  Contract, 
with  Introduction 


Ashley,  W.  J.  . 

Brentano,  L. 
Cunningham,  W. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

An  Introduction  to  English  Economic  History 
and  Theory 

History  and  Development  of  Gilds 
The  Growth  of  English  Industry  and  Com¬ 
merce 


CHAPTER  XV 


Cunningham,  W. 

Gooch,  G.  P.  ... 
Hammond,  J.  L.  and  B. 
Price,  L.  L.  . 


The  Growth  of  English  Industry  and  Com¬ 
merce 

Political  Thought  in  England  from  Bacon  to 
Halifax 

The  Town  Labourer,  1760-1832 

The  Cambridge  Modern  History,  vol.  ii. 

A  Short  History  of  Political  Economy  in 
England 


Books  Consulted 


315 


CHAPTER  XVI 

Cunningham,  W. 

Hammond,  J.  L.  and  B.  . 

Perris,  G.  H . 


The  Growth  of  English  Industry  and  Com¬ 
merce 

The  Town  Labourer,  1760-1832 

The  Industrial  History  of  Modern  England 


CHAPTER  XVII 


Carlyle,  Thomas  . 

Chesterton,  G.  K. 
Cobbett,  William  . 
Hammond,  J.  L.  and  B. 
Morley,  John  . 
Seignobos,  Charles 
Webb,  S.  and  B. 


Past  and  Present 
Latter  Day  Pamphlets 
The  Victorian  Age  in  Literature 
Rural  Rides,  etc. 

The  Town  Labourer,  1760-1832 
Life  of  Richard  Cobden 
A  Political  History  of  Europe  since  1814 
History  of  Trade  Unionism 


Napier,  T.  B. 
Powell,  Ellis  T. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

Essay  in  “A  Century  of  Law  Reform  ” 
.  The  Evolution  of  the  Money  Market 


CHAPTER  XIX 


Chesterton,  Cecil 
Farrow,  T.,  and  Crotch,  W. 
Hueffer,  F.  M.  . 
Maeztu,  Ramiro  de 

Laughlin,  J.  L.  . 

Steed,  Wickham 
Taylor,  G.  R.  S.  . 


The  Prussian  hath  Said  in  his  Heart 
The  Coming  Trade  War 
When  Blood  was  their  Argument 
Authority,  Liberty  and  Function  in  the  Light 
of  the  War 

The  Credit  of  the  Nations 
The  Hapsburg  Monarchy 
Psychology  of  the  Great  War 


Anet,  Claude  . 

Keeling,  H.  V. 
Kerensky,  A.  F. 
Lloyd,  C.  M. 
Paul,  W. 
Ransome,  Arthur 
Sacks,  A.  J. 
Starr,  Mark 
Trotsky,  Leon 


CHAPTER  XX 

La  Revolution  Russe  (vol.  i.  translated  into 
English) 

Bolshevism 

The  Prelude  to  Bolshevism 
Trade  Unionism 

The  State  :  its  Origin  and  Function 
Six  Weeks  in  Russia  in  1919 
The  Dawn  of  the  Russian  Revolution 
A  Worker  Looks  at  History 
The  Russian  Revolution 


r 


INDEX 


Aachen,  118 
Abbas,  106 
Abbasid  dynasty,  106 
Act  of  Six  Articles,  17T 
Advancement  of  Learning,  116 
JEneid,  the,  27,  130 
Agriculture  :  rural  depopulation,  19, 
21,  168,  255  ;  Guilds  of,  51,  79  ; 
evictions,  70,  77,  174,  175  ;  sheep¬ 
farming,  78,  173,  174,  215  ;  under 
Canon  Law,  224;  encouragement  of 
by  Cecil,  227  ;  destruction  of  by 
Free  Trade,  255  ;  limited  liability- 
company  in,  262;  need  of  revival  of, 
306,  307,  310.  See  also  Land- 
holding 
Agrippa,  29 
Aix-la-Chapelle,  118 
Albert  IV,  Duke  of  Bavaria,  52 
Albertus  Magnus,  109,  hi,  112, 

131 

Albigenses,  96-8 
Alchemy,  103,  108 
Alcuin  of  York,  93 
Alexander  the  Great,  18 
Alexander,  the  Nuncio,  143 
Alexander  III,  Pope,  65 
Alexander  VI,  Pope,  133 
Alexandria,  87 
Ali,  106 
Almansur,  106 
Alsace-Lorraine,  8,  275 
America,  228,  240,  281,  31 1 
Angell,  Norman,  275 
Anti-Corn  Law  League,  254 
Antoninus  Pius,  Emperor  of  Rome, 
3b  296. 

Antony,  29 

Apprenticeship,  under  Guilds,  40, 
123  ;  Act  of  Henry  IV,  215  ; 
Statute  of,  219,  226;  repeal  of, 
200 

Apulia,  24 


Aquinas.  See  St.  Thomas  Aquinas 
Arabic,  106 

Architecture,  92,  109,  112,  134,  246; 
Greek,  119-121  ;  Roman,  118-121, 
133,  I35>  136  ;  Byzantine,  89,  90  ; 
Gothic,  102,  117  seq.,  113,  165; 
French  Gothic,  125  ;  English 
Gothic,  125  ;  Norman,  123  ;  Tudor, 
124  ;  Italian  Gothic,  125,  134  ; 

Flemish  Gothic,  125  ;  Renaissance, 
1 12,  125,  134  seq.  ;  Vernacular 

Renaissance,Elizabethan,  Jacobean, 
Queen  Anne,  Georgian,  135 
Armada,  Spanish,  227 
Armaments,  272 

Armies  :  of  Rome,  28  ;  mercenary, 
176  ;  of  French  Revolution,  204, 
208 

Aristocracy,  Revival  of,  187 
Aristotle,  5,  15,  37,  105  seq.,  128, 
130,  131,  153,  156,  230,  256 
Arthur,  Prince,  160 
Arts  of  the  Middle  Ages,  117  seq. 
Asceticism,  107 

Ashley,  W.  J.,  quoted,  74,  77,  155, 
218,  219 
Ashton,  241 
Asia,  309,  31 1 
Astrology,  108 
Athens,  16,  18,  19,  305 
Attica,  16 

Augustus,  28-32,  21 1 
Austria,  273,  287 
Authority,  122,  172,  187 
Averroes,  106,  107,  113 
Azo,  76 

Bacon,  Lord,  80,  83,  114 
Bacon,  Roger,  hi 
Baedeker’s  Guides,  125 
Bagdad,  106 
Bankers,  22,  154 
Barbarians,  25,  89 


318  A  Guildsman  s  Interpretation  of  History 


Basle,  no.  See  Universities 
Bavaria,  15 1. 

Beauvais,  Synod  of,  96 
Bede,  92 

Belgium,  24,  271,  276 
Belloc,  Hilaire,  quoted,  170 
Benedict  XIV,  Pope,  104 
Benedictines,  92,  129,  130 
Berg,  67 

Bible,  34,  35,  1 13,  1 14,  184 
Billaud-Varennes,  206 
Bill  of  Rights,  82 
Black  Death,  78 
Bohemia,  129 
Boleyn,  Anne,  159 

Bologna,  6i,  105,  109.  See.  Universities 
Bolsheviks,  Bolshevism,  283  seq.  See 
also  Marx,  Class  War,  and  Material¬ 
ist  Conception  of  History 
Bon,  Gustave  le,  quoted,  209 
Boniface  VIII,  Pope,  65,  104 
Borgia,  Caesar,  133 
Boritzer,  Matthew,  135 
Bracton,  73,  73,  76 
Brentano,  L.,  quoted,  37,  38,  220, 
221 

Britain,  88,  91 
Bruges,  the  belfry  at,  125 
Bruno,  113 
Brutus,  88 

Bubble  Act,  260  ;  repeal  of,  261 
Buddhism,  35,  36 
Bulgaria,  86 
Bullion,  228-30 

Bureaucracy,  28,  86,  211,  212,  273, 
274,  275,  295 

Bussell,  F.  W.,  quoted,  107 
Cabul,  18 

Caesar,  28,  118,  130 
Caliphate,  106 

Calvin,  Calvinism,  155,  171,  182,  192 
Cambridge,  King’s  College  Chapel, 
124;  Trinity  College,  135 
Cambridge  Modern  History,  quoted, 
130,  131,  143,  168,  177 
Canon  Law,  59,  62,  63,  65,  67,  224 
Capitalism  follows  introduction  of 
currency  and  growth  of  foreign 
trade  in  Greece,  13  seq.  ;  follows 
militarism  in  Rome,  19  seq.  ;  joint- 
stock  companies  in  Rome,  21,  22  ; 
destruction  of  rivals  by  Romans,  24; 


creates  social  disorders,  23 ;  paralyses 
government,  27 ;  Augustus  curbs 
power  of  capitalists,  29  ;  Roman 
Law  a  product  of  capitalism,  32  ; 
suppressed  in  Middle  Ages,  39  ; 
reappears  after  revival  of  Roman 
Law,  70,  83  ;  in  Germany  in  Middle 
Ages,  147  ;  in  England,  215  ;  capi¬ 
talists  invest  in  land,  173  ;  promote 
sheep-farming,  173 ;  exploit"  domes¬ 
tic  industry,”  215  ;  undermine 
the  Guilds,  215-18;  triumphs  with 
Reformation,  156;  prosperity  re¬ 
stored  by  capitalists  after  suppres¬ 
sion  of  monasteries,  226 ;  growth 
of  belief  in,  228  ;  mercantilism,  229 
seq.  ;  Manchester  School,  233  seq.  ; 
Industrial  Revolution,  237  seq.  ; 
Free  Trade,  255-6;  Limited  Lia¬ 
bility  Companies,  259  seq.  ;  a  cause 
of  the  war,  275  ;  the  economic 
cul-de-sac,  281  ;  leads  to  Bol¬ 
shevism,  286 

Carpenter,  E.,  quoted,  115 
Carrier,  206 

Carthage,  24,  85,  276,  305 
Catastrophism,  249,  308 
Catharists,  96,  100 

Cathedrals  of  Amiens,  Bourges,  Char¬ 
tres,  Paris,  Rheims,  Rouen,  Milan, 
Orvieto,  125 

Catherine  of  Arragon,  158 
Catholics,  1 7 1  seq. 

Cecil,  W.,  Lord  Burghley,  227 
Chambers  of  Commerce,  219 
Chantries  Bill,  219 
Charlemagne,  Emperor,  55,  56,  118 
Charles  I,  184,  185,  239,  240 
Charles  IV,  Emperor,  67 
Charles  V,  Emperor,  15 1,  160 
Chartists,  252-4 
Chaucer,  129 
Chemistry,  102,  103,  m 
Chesterton,  G.  K.,  quoted,  45,  83, 
125,  189,  298,  299 
Chivalry,  49,  71 
Christian  Admonition,  224 
Christian  Fathers,  29,  88,  129,  130 
Christianity,  communal  basis  of,  34, 
35,  298 ;  introduces  a  new  moral 
principle,  35 ;  sustained  the  com¬ 
munal  spirit  of  Middle  Ages,  36  ; 
and  the  Guilds,  37  ;  made  possible 


Index 


319 


the  Just  Price,  39  ;  Greek  philo¬ 
sophy  incorporated  in  Christian 
dogmas,  88  ;  need  of  dogmas,  88  ; 
Gothic  architecture,  expression  of, 
1 20- 1  ;  Renaissance  not  originally 
a  reaction  against  Christianity,  but 
against  FranciscanGospel  of  Poverty, 
127  seq.  ;  Reformation  an  attempt 
to  return  to  discipline  of  Early 
Church,  152  ;  Puritanism  a  per¬ 
version  of  Christianity,  139-40, 
184-5,  308-9 

Church  and  State,  54  seq.,  65  seq., 
98,  160,  1 71,  178,  193,  244.  See  also 
Holy  Roman  Empire 
Church,  Eastern,  89,  91,  106 
Church  of  England,  174 
Church,  Western  or  Roman  :  civilized 
the  barbarians,  91  ;  preserved  learn¬ 
ing  through  the  Dark  Ages,  92,  130  ; 
opposed  to  heresy,  94  seq.  ;  encour¬ 
aged  science,  105  seq.  ;  attempted  to 
suppress  revival  of  Roman  Law, 
65  ;  Unani  Sanctum,  66 ;  estab¬ 
lished  the  Inquisition,  98  ;  corrupted 
by  Renaissance,  57,  133,  142-3  ; 
wealth  of,  27,  37,  60,  92,  166,  170  ; 
attitude  towards  property,  27,  156  ; 
towards  usury,  153  ;  reason  for 
post-Reformation  policy,  177-8 
Cicero,  24,  88,  120 
Cistercians,  98,  129 
Civil  War,  the,  186,  240 
Class  War,  18,  19,  24,  84,  150,  174-5, 
236,  246,  285  seq. 

Clement  V,  Pope,  99 
Clement  VII,  Pope,  159 
Cleopatra,  29 
Coal  Commission,  306 
Cobbett,  Wm.,  quoted,  86,  102,  162, 
163,  183,  184,  250,  251 
Coke,  Edward,  82 
Collectivism,  299,  307 
Collegia,  Roman,  30,  31,  38 
Combination  Laws,  222  ;  repeal  of, 
222. 

Commentators,  64,  98 
Committee  of  Public  Safety,  207 
Communal  art,  119,  137  ;  culture, 
137  ;  law,  see  Mediaeval  Law ; 
property,  see  Land-holding  ;  basis 
of  Christianity,  see  Christianity 
Conrad  II,  Emperor,  60 


Conservatives,  299 
Constantine  the  Great,  31,  96 
Constantinople,  89,  91,  107,  13 1  ; 
Council  of,  36 

Constituent  Assembly,  204.  See  French 
Revolution 

Convention,  the,  205.  See  French 
Revolution 

Coomaraswamy,  A.  K.,  quoted,  242 
Corinth,  24,  85,  276 
Corn  Laws,  254,  255 
Cortes,  163 

Coutances,  Bishop  of,  60 
Coventry,  221 
Cowley,  E.,  quoted,  248 
Craft  culture,  112,  137 
Credit,  Creditism,  268,  275 
Cromwell,  Oliver,  83 ;  Thomas,  161 
seq. 

Crown,  the,  158,  260,  261 
Cuba,  50 

Cunningham,  E.,  quoted,  166,  167, 
170,  215 

Currency,  13  seq.,  19,  20,  22,  32,  34, 
79,  199,  200,  201,  208,  213, 

^  214,  217,  230,  278,  308 
Czechs,  273 

Dante,  130 
Danton,  206 

Dark  Ages,  89,  91,  92,  93.  See  also 
Learning 

Davanent,  Chas.,  232 
Decretum,  the,  65 
Defender  of  the  Faith,  158 
Deloume,  A.,  quoted,  88 
Depopulation.  See  Agriculture 
Dickinson,  J.  Lowes,  271 
Diocletian,  Emperor  of  Rome,  31 
Directory,  the,  208-10.  See  French 
Revolution 

Disraeli,  Benjamin,  250,  257 
Disraeli,  Isaac,  quoted,  186 
Discourses  on  the  Commonweal,  175 
Dissection,  102,  103,  104 
Divina  Commedia,  130 
Divine  Right  of  Kings,  51,  64,  81,  82, 
195 

Division  of  Labour.  See  Industrial 
Revolution 
Dogmas,  88,  122 
Domesday  Book,  49 
Dominicans,  109,  hi,  117,  126 


320  A  Guildsmans  Interpretation  of  History 


Douglas,  C.  H.,  268 
Dover,  184 
Dutch,  the,  229,  305 
Dutch  War,  the,  229 

Early  Christians,  35,  36,  96,  152 
Early  Church,  34,  87,  88,  96,  142, 

152-3 

East  India  Company,  232,  259 
Economic  cul-de-sac,  276,  281 
Education  system,  169 
Edward  VI,  164,  171  seq.,  219,  226, 

239 

Elective  priesthood,  145,  153 
Elizabeth,  Oueen,  80,  165,  181  seq., 
226,  239,  259 

Empire,  Eastern,  89,  118;  Western, 
89,  130 

Enclosures,  77,  174,  175.  See  Land- 
holding  and  Agriculture 
England,  65,  126,  158  seq.,  272,  291 
Entente,  the  277 
Epicureanism,  132 
Epitadeus,  Ephor,  16 
Equality,  195-7.  $ee  French  Revolu¬ 
tion 

Erasmus,  145,  146 
Etruria,  25 
Eupatrid,  14 

Evictions.  See  Agriculture 
Fabians,  45,  307 

Factory  Acts,  241  ;  system,  see 
Industrial  Revolution 
Farrow,  Thos.,  and  Crotch,  W.,  quoted, 
276 

Fawkes,  Guy,  183 

Feudalism,  Feudal  System,  25,  48-51, 
74,  75.  77.  78,  84,  148,  173,  192, 
202,  214 

Ficino,  Marsilio,  131 
Finance,  after-war  problems  of, 
279  seq. 

Fire  Insurance  Co.’s  of  London,  220 
Fisher,  John,  Bishop  of  Rochester, 
160 

Flanders,  Hotels  de  Ville  of,  124 
Flemings,  41 
Florence,  105,  154 

Foreign  Trade,  18,  10,  127,  147,  226, 
230,  231,  239,  271,  272,  277,  305 
Fouche,  206 

Fowler,  W.  Warde,  quoted,  25,  30 


France,  65,  96,  97,  126,  189  seq.,  272, 
299,  302 

France,  Northern,  24,  276 
Franciscans,  93,  109,  in,  112,  117, 
126,  128,  129,  132,  154,  161 
Frederick  Barbarossa,  Emperor,  65, 
98 

Frederick  II,  Emperor,  98,  99 
Free  Trade,  Free  Traders,  229,  232, 
233,  254-6 

French  Revolution,  33,  189  seq.,  247  ; 
inspired  by  Rousseau,  19 1  ;  a 
frustrated  movement  back  to  Medi¬ 
evalism,  190  ;  a  consequence  of  the 
policy  of  Louis  XVI,  190 ;  limi¬ 
tations  of  Rousseau,  191  ;  the  Social 
Contract,  explanation  of,  193  seq.  ; 
not  understood  by  his  followers, 

203  ;  the  Constituent  Assembly, 

204  ;  the  Girondins,  205  ;  the  Con¬ 
vention,  205  ;  the  Jacobins,  205  ; 
the  Terror,  206  ;  Robespierre,  206  ; 
Committee  of  Public  Safety,  207  ; 
corruption  of  the  Assemblies,  207  ; 
the  counter-Revolution,  208  ;  the 
Directory,  208  ;  the  Catholic  revival, 
208  ;  the  coup  d’etat  of  Napoleon, 
209;  his  policy,  210;  why  the 
Revolution  failed,  21 1 

French  Revolution  of  1848,  252 
Froude,  190 
Fuero  Juzgo,  32 

Galileo,  113 
Gaul,  24,  85 
Gelasius,  Pope,  56 
General  Will,  202.  See  Social  Con¬ 
tract 

Geneva,  192 

German  Empire,  64,  72,  93 
Germans,  23,  24,  85,  273-5 
Germany,  19,  64,  67,  68,  70,  96,  97, 
126,  139  seq.,  158,  161,  191,  268, 

-7°.  27L  273>  275,  276.  287 
Gierke,  Otto,  quoted,  53 
Girondins,  205,  210.  See  also  French 
Revolution 
Gladstone,  257 
Glasgow,  261 
Glossators,  62,  64 

Gloucester,  Humphrey,  Duke  of,  164 
Gnostics,  97 

Gooch,  G.  P.,  quoted,  81,  232 


Index 


321 


Gothic  architecture,  118  seq. 

Gothic  Revivalists,  102 
Gracchi,  the,  20,  26-8 
Gracchus,  Tiberius,  25-27  ;  Caius,  26 
Gratian,  59,  65 
Great  Schism,  57,  143 
Greece,  13  seq.,  192,  198,  199,  298, 
3°8,  311 

Greece,  City  States  of,  198.  See 
Social  Contract 
Greek  culture.  See  Learning 
Gregory  the  Great,  Pope,  91 
Gregory  VII,  Pope,  60 
Gregory  IX,  Pope,  65,  98,  99,  100, 
107 

Guild  idea,  the,  299,  300 
Guilds,  the  Guild  System,  15,  30,  31, 
37,  38  seq.,  47,  79,  84,  86,  122,  123, 
147,  199,  200,  214  seq.,  222,  224, 
229,  238,  240,  250,  269,  270,  304, 
308,  310  ;  rise  of,  37;  religious 
Guilds,  37 ;  Frith  Guilds,  38 ; 
economic  Guilds,  39 ;  communist 
spirit  of,  37,  39  ;  to  enforce  Just 
Price,  39,  40 ;  Guilds  Merchant, 

40- 2,  44,  146-7,  260  ;  Craft  Guilds, 

41- 3,  123  ;  Merchant  Adventurers, 
42  ;  Journeymen  Fraternities,  42  ; 
taxation  of,  215;  decline  of,  215 
seq.  ;  tyranny  of,  44-5,  216;  at¬ 
tempted  reorganization  of,  217  ; 
defeat  of,  218;  confiscation  of 
property  of,  219  ;  survival  of,  219  ; 
fixed  prices  leads  to  a  revival  of, 
304-8,  310 

Guildsman,  303,  309 
Gunpowder  Plot,  1S3 

Haingerichte,  150 
Hales,  John,  175 

Hanseatic  League,  147,  305  ;  steel¬ 
yard  in  London,  147 
Hammond,  J.  L.  and  B.,  quoted,  238 
Hampden,  John,  186 
Heine,  32,  33 
Henry  I,  74 
Henry  II,  74,  160,  298 
Henry  IV,  Emperor,  61 
Henry  VII,  217 

Henry  VIII,  158  seq.,  171,  174,  175, 
217,  224,  228 

Heresy,  93  seq.,  103,  107,  108,  109, 
112,  113,  171,  248;  Manichean,  66, 


95,  96,  97>  132  ;  Arian,  95  ;  Nes- 
torian,  95 

Heretics,  95,  100,  171,  183 
History  of  the  Reformation,  251 
Hohenstaufen  family,  65,  98 
Holy  Roman  Empire,  theory  of,  54  ; 
centre  of  European  life,  55  ;  quarrel 
over  Right  of  Investiture,  56,  60  ; 
undermined  by  revival  of  Roman 
Law,  61  seq.  ;  impotence  of,  in 
fifteen  century,  71  ;  destruction  of 
by  armies  of  Napoleon,  55 
Honorius  III,  Pope,  65 
Horace,  130 

House  of  Commons.  See  Parliament 
House  of  Lords,  292-3 
Housing  shortage,  307 
Hudson  Bay  Company,  260 
Hugh  of  St.  Victor,  66 
Hungary,  65 

Humanists,  129  seq.,  131,  132,  146 
Huss,  Hussite  movement,  129,  158 
Huxley,  J.  H.,  quoted,  113 

India,  273 

Indulgences,  14 1  seq. 

Industrial  movement,  258 
Industrial  Revolution,  years  of  dra¬ 
matic  change,  237  ;  invention  of 
machinery  made  possible  by  divi¬ 
sion  of  labour,  238  ;  workers  dis¬ 
like  of,  238  ;  built  upon  a  slave 
class,  239 ;  opposition  of  Tudors 
and  Stuarts  to  mechanical  invention, 

239- 40 ;  dominated  by  Puritan  spirit, 

240- 1  ;  cruelty  of  the  system,  241  ; 
in  Germany,  America  and  India, 

241- 2  ;  has  industrialism  come  to 
stay,  242  ;  reared  on  a  base  of 
social  injustice,  242  ;  imminence  of 
economic  breakdown,  243  ;  every 
popular  demand  incompatible  with 
industrialism,  243  ;  workers  seek  its 
destruction,  244  ;  division  of  labour 
must  be  challenged,  245  ;  only 
small  machines  permitted  in  the 
future,  245 

Industry,  domestic  system  of,  215 
Innocent  III,  Pope,  66,  98 
Innocent  IV,  Pope,  65 
Inquisition,  98  seq. 

Investiture,  Right  of,  57,  60 
Ireland,  239 


322  A  Guildsmarfs  Interpretation  of  History 


Irnerius,  61,  62 
Isocrates,  18 

Italy,  29,  68,  89,  96,  126  seq,,  146, 

161 

Jacks,  I,.  P.,  quoted,  123 
Jacobins,  194,  201,  203-6,  210 
James  I,  51,  81,  165,  183,  230,  239, 
260 

Janiculum,  20 

Janssen,  Johannes,  quoted,  47,  52, 
56,  70,  72,  no,  135,  145,  146,  147, 
i49»  225 

Jarrett,  Bede,  quoted,  128,  154 
Jerome,  158 
Jews,  100 

John  of  Gaunt,  78,  140,  156 
John  of  Salisbury,  53 
John  XXII,  Pope,  103,  no 
Joint-Stock  Companies,  in  Rome,  21, 
22  ;  in  England,  260  seq.  See  also 
Limited  Liability  Companies 
Jones,  H.  Stuart,  quoted,  31 
Joshua,  114 
Julick,  67 
Junkerdom,  85 

Jurists,  Roman,  59,  199,  295,  296 ; 
Mediaeval,  61  seq.,  73,  75,  76,  295, 
296 

Justinian  Code,  61,  64-5,  75,  80,  89, 
218,  296 

Kepler,  113 

Kerensky,  286,  287 

Knights,  robber,  48 ;  chivalrous,  49 

Knox,  John,  182 

Kropotkin,  P.,  quoted,  190 

Labour  Party,  258,  292,  293 
Lacher,  Lawrence,  135 
Laissez-faire,  233-4 
Lancashire,  239,  241 
Land-holding,  communal  system  of 
land-holding,  broken  up  by  currency 
and  private  property  established,  in 
Greece,  13  seq.  ;  in  Rome,  19  seq.  ; 
Christianity  preserves  communal 
land  system  of  barbarian  tribes,  37  ; 
Church  property,  37,  60,  92,  166  ; 
land  under  feudal  system,  50 ; 
revival  of  Roman  Law  transforms 
feudalism  into  landlordism,  76-7  ; 
provokes  Peasants'  Revolt  of  1381, 


78-9  ;  provokes  Peasants’  War  in 
Germany,  150  ;  suppression  of  mon¬ 
asteries  results  in  land-grabbing, 

1 61  seq.  ;  Reformation  a  victory  for 
landlordism,  156,  170,  182  ;  changed 
attitude  towards  property  of  new 
landlords,  173  ;  Peasants’  Revolt  of 
1549,  173  seq.  ;  the  Civil  War  a 
triumph  of  landlordism,  185-6 ; 
relations  of  property  and  currency, 
208  ;  French  Revolution  creates 
new  landlords,  208  ;  suggested  sys¬ 
tem  of  land-holding,  305-6 ;  land 
and  title  deeds,  306.  See  also 
Agriculture 

Langenstein,  Heinrich  von,  47 
Lambert,  J.  M.,  31 
Lateran  Council  (1179),  98 
Law  Courts,  292,  293,  294,  296 
Lawyers,  66,  67,  70,  73,  74,  75,  76, 
78,  80,  82,  153,  156,  167,  173,  204, 
210,  226,  294,  295,  308.  See  also 
Roman  Law 
League  of  Nations,  55 
Learning,  traditions  of,  preserved 
through  the  Dark  Ages  at  Constan¬ 
tinople,  89 ;  knowledge  of  Greek 
faded  from  the  West,  130;  Latin 
Classics  preserved  by  the  Bene¬ 
dictines,  92,  93,  130  ;  re-discovery 
of  Aristotle,  106-7  ;  emigration  of 
Greek  scholars  to  Italy  after  fall 
of  Constantinople,  89,  13 1  ;  Re¬ 
vival  of  Learning,  130  seq.,  168.  See 
also  Heresy,  Science  and  Renais¬ 
sance 

Legislator,  the,  196.  See  Social  Con¬ 
tract 

Leith,  182 
Leitzkau,  144 
Leo  III,  Pope,  55 
Leo  X,  Pope,  14 1 

Lethaby,  W.  R.,  quoted,  90,  119,  123 
Letters  of  John  Chinaman,  271 
Levant,  68,  146 
Liberals,  45,  205,  252 
Libraries,  destruction  of  at  Reforma¬ 
tion,  164 
Licinian  Law,  25 

Limited  Liability  Companies,  2 59  seq. ; 
Acts  of,  1855,  1856  and  1862,  261-2  ; 
Board  of  Trade  returns  of,  262  ; 
corrupting  influence  of,  262  seq. ; 


Index 


323 


create  labour  troubles,  294.  See 
also  Joint-Stock  Companies 
Lingard,  John,  quoted,  171 
Lipson,  E.,  quoted,  38,  40,  42,  43 
Lloyd,  C.  M.,  quoted,  292,  293 
Lodge,  Sir  Oliver,  115 
Lollards,  158 
Lombards,  56,  118 
London,  136,  171,  186,  219 
Louis  XIV,  190 
Louis  XVI,  1 91 
Louis  XVIII,  209 
Lowell,  120 
Lucian,  130 
Ludovici,  A.  M.,  186-7 
Luther,  114,  141  seq.,  15 1,  156,  158 
Lutherans,  152,  171 
'  Lycurgus,  15,  16,  17 

Macaulay,  114 
Macclesfield,  221 
Machia  velli,  133,  1 6 1 
Machinery,  hypnotic  influence  of,  247, 
248,  250,  256.  See  Industrial  Re¬ 
volution 

Maeztu,  Ramiro  de,  quoted,  45,  187, 
203,  273,  275,  277,  310 
Magic,  97,  10S 
Mahomet,  105 

Maine,  Sir  Henry,  quoted,  22 
Maitland,  F.  W.,  quoted,  65 
Malynes,  Gerard,  230 
Manchester  School,  233  seq.,  252, 
259,  260,  284 

Manegold,  of  Lautenbach,  53 
Manichean  Heresy.  See  Heresy 
Marat,  201 
Marcus  Aurelius,  94 
Marius,  27,  28 

Markets,  exhaustion  of,  271,  272,  27.5, 
277 

Marston,  Chas.,  quoted,  36 
Martial,  130 

Marx,  Marxians,  8,  9,  10,  45,  46, 
86,  87,  88,  155,  174,  175,  194, 

212,  235,  287,  288,  289,  297,  302, 
307,  308,  309,  310.  See  also  Bol¬ 
shevists.  Class  War,  Materialist 
Conception  of  History 
Mary,  Queen  of  England,  179  seq. 
Mary,  Queen  of  Scots,  182 
Materialist  conception  of  history,  8, 
9,  10 


Matilda,  Countess  of  Tuscany,  61 
Maximilian,  Emperor,  143 
Maximum  Production,  275,  277,  281, 
282 

Mediaeval  law,  communal  law,  cus¬ 
tomary  law,  32,  51,  58,  68,  69,  73, 
75,  192,  194,  297 
Mediaevalist  position,  298  seq. 

Medical  schools  in  the  Middle  Ages, 

105 

Medici,  Giovanni  de,  132 
Medici,  Giuliano  de,  133 
Medici,  Lorenzo  de,  132 
Mediterranean,  13,  105 
Melanchthon,  114,  156 
Mercantilism,  229  seq.,  232 
Mercenaries,  1 76 

Merchants,  middlemen,  14,  18,  22, 
41,  147,  214,  225,  255,  256,  260 
Merton,  Statute  of,  77 
Metric  System,  21 1 
Mexico,  50 

Michelangelo,  133,  134 
Mill,  John  Stuart,  235 
Milman,  quoted,  66 
Mirandola,  Pico  della,  1 3 1 
Mivart,  Professor,  113 
Modernism,  248 

Monarchy,  51,  52,  53,  80,  81,  84,  195 
Monasteries,  86,  130  ;  suppression  of, 

152,  157.  158  seq. 

Monastic  arts,  168 
Monastic  orders,  91,  92,  93,  108  seq. 
Montes  Pietatis,  154 
Montford,  Simon  de,  98 
More,  Sir  Thomas,  160,  174,  236 
Mountain,  the,  205.  See  French  Re¬ 
volution 

Mun,  Thomas,  230-3 
Munitions  Act,  294 
Munitions,  Ministry  of,  278 
Music,  92,  94,  109 

Napoleon,  55,  189,  209  seq. 
Napoleonic  Wars,  246,  249,  254 
Navigation  Act,  229,  230 
Neo-Platonism,  87-88 
Nero,  21 

Nestorians,  95,  105 
Netherlands,  173,  191,  227 
Nevers,  Bishop  of,  60 
Newton,  113 

Nineteenth  Century,  246  seq. 


324  A  Guildsman's  Interpretation  of  History 


Noel,  Conrad,  quoted,  36 
Norman  Conquest,  49 
North  Dudley,  232 
Northcliffe  Press,  303 
Northumberland,  Duke  of,  176 
Novum  Organum,  114 
Nuneaton,  221 
Nuremberg,  67,  151 

Oligarchy,  18,  29,  246 
O’Neill,  H.  C.,  quoted,  52,  53 
Ommiades,  106 
Orleans,  70 

Osborne  Judgment,  293-4 
Otto  II,  Emperor,  60 
Ovid,  130 

Oxford.  See  Universities 

Paganism,  29,  34,  35,  36,  87,  88,  122, 
126,  131,  132,  146,  192,  193 
Painting,  109,  134,  135 
Pantheism,  107,  117 
Papacy,  56,  57,  59,  65,  66,  91,  98  seq., 
102  seq.,  128,  132,  133,  141-3,  159, 
180 

Papal  Medical  School,  105 
Paris  :  Church  of  St.  Denis,  124  ; 
Treaty  of  (1229),  98.  See  Uni¬ 
versities 

Paris,  commune  of,  204,  205,  206 ; 
Council  of,  107 

Parliament,  80,  82,  83,  98,  161,  171, 
175,  180,  185,  186,  220,  221,  230, 
257,  260 

Party  System,  257 
Patricians  (Patrons),  19,  20,  22 
Paul,  W.,  quoted,  244,  296 
Pauli,  Reinhold,  quoted,  92,  93,  ill, 
147 

Payment  of  members,  293 
Peasants’  Revolt  (1381),  43,  79,  80, 
156,  217 

Peasants’  Revolt  (1349),  173-6 

Peasants’  War  in  Germany,  150-1 

Peel,  .Sir  Robert,  254 

Peloponnesian  War,  15-18 

Peru,  Conquest  of,  163 

Petrarch,  130 

Petronius,  132 

Philip  of  Spain,  182 

Pisistratus,  17 

Pitt,  William,  221 

Pius  II,  Pope,  no 


Pizarro,  163 
Place,  Francis,  232 
Plain,  the,  205.  See  French  Revolu¬ 
tion 

Plato,  .15,  88,  93,  94,  1 3 1,  308 
Pliny,  21 
Poland,  68,  146 
Pole,  Cardinal,  180 
Poles,  the,  274 

Poor  Law,  Elizabethan,  167,  168 
Popanilla,  257 

Poverty,  Gospel  of,  127,  128 
Price,  Just  or  Fixed,  15,  39,  40,  45,  47, 
79,  190,  193,  199,  200,  201,  212,  218, 
233,  300,  303,  304.  See  also  Guilds 
Printing,  142,  145,  168,  171 
Profiteering,  15,  18,  39,  147,  177,  201, 
207,  212,  218,  267,  278,  282,  283, 
290 

Profiteering  Act,  303,  310 
Property.  See  Land-holding 
Protection,  255 

Protestantism,  81,  82,  no,  114,  139 
seq.,  158  seq.,  170  seq. 

Publicani,  22,  88 
!  Punic  Wars,  20,  21 
Puritans,  82,  140,  184,  185,  186,  240, 
241 

Quick,  O.  C.,  quoted,  88,  97 
Quintessence  of  Ibsenism,  248 
Quintilian,  130 

Radicals,  247,  250,  251,  252,  257 
Railway  boom,  collapse  of,  261 
Railway  Servants,  Amalgamated  So¬ 
ciety  of,  292,  293 

Railways,  building  of,  189,  249,  255 
Rashdall,  Hastings,  quoted,  62,  106, 
107,  no 

Rationalism,  107,  117,  138 
Ratisbon,  Council  of,  147 
Ravenna,  61 
Reform  Bill  (1832),  232 
Reformation,  57,  114,  139  seq.,  158 
seq.,  170  seq. 

Regulated  companies,  260 
Reichskammergericht,  67 
Reims,  Synod  of,  60 
Renaissance,  the,  112,  126  seq.,  139. 
146,  161,  192  ;  a  reaction  against 
Franciscan  Gospel  of  Poverty,  126- 
131  ;  attempts  at  reconciliation  of 


Index 


325 


Plato  with  Christianity,  13 1  ;  Pagan¬ 
ism  of  later  Renaissance,  131  ; 
corruption  which  followed  Pagan 
ideal  132 ;  its  reaction  on  the 
Papacy,  133 ;  destroyed  the  arts, 
133-136;  bad  influence  of  Michel¬ 
angelo,  134  ;  destroyed  communal 
culture,  137;  led  to  Reformation, 
139  ;  and  French  Revolution,  192 
Renaissance  Popes,  57,  133,  142,  143 
Repgow,  Eike  von,  69 
Resurrection  of  the  Body,  97,  103,  1 32 
Ricardo,  235 
Richard  II,  158 
Richmond,  Duke  o^,  159 
Robespierre,  206-7 
Rogers,  Thorold,  quoted,  220,  283 
Roman  Law,  26,  32-3,  37,  51,  56,  58, 
seq.,  72  seq.,  89, 98, 101, 144, 146, 148, 
150, 156,  170, 175,  177, 190,  192, 194, 
199,  210,  214,  222,  251,  269,  274, 
295-8,  304,  306,  310,  31 1  ;  origins  of, 
32  ;  Heine  on,  32-3  ;  after  decline 
of  Empire,  58  ;  Visigothic  compila¬ 
tion,  59  ;  superseded  by  Canon  law, 
59  ;  revival  follows  quarrel  over 
Investiture,  60 ;  Irnerius  revives 
Justinian  Code,  61  ;  Glossators  in¬ 
fatuated  by  it,  62  ;  how  it  differs 
from  Mediaeval  law,  63  ;  adopted  by 
Emperors,  64;  sows  discord  between 
Church  and  State,  66  ;  reception 
in  Germany,  67-68 ;  supersedes 
customary  law,  69  ;  Sir  Paul  Vino- 
gradoff  on  reasons  for  reception, 
69  ;  breaks  up  the  Mediaeval  Em¬ 
pire,  71  ;  English  law  Roman  in 
principle,  73  ;  Henry  II  and  Royal 
Courts  of  Justice,  74;  attempt  to 
transform  feudalism  into  slavery, 
75  ;  transforms  feudalism  into  land¬ 
lordism,  77  ;  Statute  of  Merton,  77  ; 
lawyers  become  stewards  of  feudal 
lords,  77;  provokes  Peasants’  Revolt 
of  1381,  78-9;  lawyers  capture 

Parliament,  80 ;  undermine  the 
Monarchy,  81  ;  paralyses  govern¬ 
ment,  83  ;  lawyers  transform  odium 
to  Mediaeval  institutions,  84  ;  need 
of  its  abolition,  310-11.  See  also 
Lawyers 

Rome,  17  seq.,  101,  105,  132,  192, 
199,  295,  298,  308,  31 1  ;  under  the 


Republic,  52,  88,  296  ;  under  the 
Empire,  27  seq.,  38,  48,  58,  88,  21 1, 
296  ;  generals,  27,  28  ;  bureaucracy, 
28,  86 ;  proletariat,  27  ;  taxation, 
22,  29  ;  unemployed,  21,  30  ;  gov¬ 
ernors  of  provinces,  23 
Rome,  St.  Peter’s  at,  141 
Roper,  Sir  Anthony,  186 
Rousseau,  189,  191  seq.  See  Social 
Contract  and  French  Revolution 
Royalists,  French,  209-10.  See  also 
French  Revolution 
Royal  African  Company,  260 
Royal  Courts  of  Justice,  74,  76 
j  Ruskin,  John,  102,  234-5,  251,  257, 
288,  289 

Russell,  Lord,  176 
Russia,  68,  146,  286,  291 
Russian  Revolution,  201,  285  seq 
Ruthenes,  274 

St.  Antonino,  128,  154,  155 
St.  Augustine,  91,  130 
St.  Bernard,  66 
St.  Dominic,  108,  109 
St.  Francis,  93,  108,  126,  127,  128,  129, 
133,  134 

St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  37,  51,  53,  66, 
109,  hi,  112,  128,  131,  156,  218, 

225 

Sachenspeigel,  the,  67,  69 
Sallust,  130 
Salvation  Army,  108 
Saracens,  86,  105,  107,  118 
Savonarola,  13 1 
Saxony,  Courts  of,  69 
Scandinavian  North,  68,  146 
Scholars  at  Oxford  and  Cambridge, 
168 

Science,  92,  102  seq.,  118 
Scipio,  28 

Scotland,  65,  182,  183 
Scott,  Sir  Walter,  102 
Scottish  Revolt,  182 
Scriptures,  interpretation  of,  113,  140, 

M5.  I53«  I7L  186 
j  Sculpture,  134,  135 
Senate,  Roman,  23,  24,  26,  27,  28  ; 
Senators,  24  ;  Senatorial  families, 
21,  23 

j  Seneca,  88 
|  Serbia,  273 
1  Serfs,  48,  49,  50 


326  A  Guildsmans  Interpretation  of  History 


Serlio,  134 

Servile  State,  8,  30,  299,  301 
Seutonius,  130 

Severus  Alexander,  Emperor  of  Rome, 

3i 

Seymour,  Jane,  159,  160 
Shaw,  G.  Bernard,  248 
Sheep-farming.  See  Agriculture 
Sheffield,  223 

Shop  Stewards’  Movement,  294 
Sixtus  IV,  Pope,  100,  133 
Slave  Wars,  25,  121 
Slavery,  16,  17,  24,  25,  75,  121,  199, 
241,  296 
Slovenes,  274 
Smiles,  Samuel,  241 
Smillie,  R.,  306 

Smith,  Adam,  229,  232-5,  247,  251, 
252,  263. 

Social  Contract,  193 ;  key  to,  193  ; 
Church  and  State,  193 ;  morality 
and  law,  194 ;  republicanism  and 
monarchy,  195  ;  doctrine  of  equality, 

195  ;  the  problem  of  the  legislator, 

196  ;  advocacy  of  small  states  and 
small  property,  197  ;  City  States  of 
Greece  as  model,  198 ;  influence 
of  Roman  Law,  199  ;  relationship  of 
property  and  currency,  200 ;  the 
doctrine  of  the  General  Will,  202  ; 
Rousseau’s  reservations  disregarded, 
203.  See  also  French  Revolution 

Socialism,  Socialists,  33,  106,  178,  198, 
212,  213,  299,  301,  303 
Socrates,  93 
Soissons,  Bishop  of,  96 
Solon,  15-18 

Somerset,  Duke  of,  171  seq. 

South  Sea  Bubble,  261 
South  Sea  Company,  260 
Soviets,  286 

Spain,  65,  96,  97,  99,  100,  106,  1 18, 
178 

Sparta,  15,  16,  18 
Spartacus,  25 
Spitalfields  Acts,  221 
Starr,  Mark,  87 
Statius,  130 

Steed,  Wickham,  quoted,  273-4 
Stoic  philosophy,  25 
Stuarts,  the,  82,  183-187,  239,  240 
Succession  Act,  159 
Sulla,  28 


Sumptuary  Laws,  17,  148,  231 
Sunday  Observance  Laws,  185 
Switzerland  285 
Sybil,  257 

Tafl  Vale  Judgment,  292,  293,  294 
Tallien,  206 

Tawney,  R.  H.,  quoted,  173-4 
Taxation  of  Land  Values,  306 
Terence,  130 

Terror,  the,  206.  See  also  French 
Revolution 

Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments,  234 

Theot,  Catherine,  206 

Toleration,  171-2 

Tories,  252 

Torquemada,  99 

Torture,  99 

Trade  Routes,  change  of,  228 
Trade  Unions,  222,  252,  292,  293, 
294  ;  Act  of,  1871,  222,  292  ;  func¬ 
tions  of,  223  ;  a  basis  for  restored 
Guilds,  223,  299,  300,  309 
Trades  Disputes  Act,  293 
Tribune,  25,  26 
Tiinity,  Doctrine  of,  88 
Trithemius,  225 
Tsar,  the,  286 

Tudor  Monarchy,  74;  159  seq.,  215, 
217-9,  224  seq.,  239 
Turks,  143 

Unam  Sanctum,  66 
Unemployment,  18,  21,  30,  210,  227, 
240,  278 

Uniformity,  Acts  of,  179 
Universities,  Mediaeval, no,  in;  Basle, 
no;  Bologna,  109;  Cambridge, 
1 68 ;  Paris,  106-9  ;  Oxford,  109, 
164,  168  ;  German,  67 
Unto  this  Last,  235 
Usury,  17,  20,  70,  88,  150,  153-5 
Utopia,  174 

Vendee,  205 
Venice,  89,  105,  305 
Verres,  88 
Vienna,  273 
Villains,  49,  75,  76 
Vincent  of  Beauvais,  in 
Vinogradofl,  Sir  Paul,  quoted,  59, 
67.  69,  75,  76 
Virgil,  29,  130 


Index 


Vitruvius,  134 
Voltaire,  198 

Wage  system,  299 

Wages,  assessment  of,  219,220;  in 
fifteenth  century,  283  ;  iron  law  of, 
235 

W'alpole,  Sir  Robert,  260 
Walsh,  J.  J.,  quoted,  103,  104 
War,  the  Great  European,  271  seq. 
War  Office,  278 
Wars  of  the  Roses,  159,  160 
Warwick,  Earl  of,  176 
Wealth,  concentration  of,  246,  249; 
problem  of  distribution  of,  282  ; 
Gospel  of,  226,  228,  229 
Wealth  of  Nations,  231,  248,  263 
Webb,  Sidney,  300 
Welfare  Work,  29 
Westminster  Abbey,  124 


Wharton,  Thos.,  quoted,  164 
William  I,  49 
William  II,  60 
William  of  Malmesbury,  90 
Wimpheling,  149 
Witchcraft,  97,  108 
Wittenberg  Castle,  14 1 
Wolsey,  Cardinal,  161,  174 
Wool,  export  of,  173 
Worms,  Diet  of  (1122),  61  ;  (1521), 
145 

Wren,  Sir  Christopher,  135 
Wycliffe,  139-141,  r56,  158 

York,  184 

Yorkshire  Woollen  Manufacturers, 
278 

> 

Zimmern,  Alf.,  quoted,  14,  15,  18 
Zwinglians,  171 


BOOKS  RELATING  TO  NATIONAL  GUILDS 


National  Guilds,  by  S.  G.  Hobson,  edited  by  A.  R.  Orage  (Bell  &  Sons,  6s.) 
An  Alphabet  of  Economics,  by  A.  R.  Orage  (T.  Fisher  Unwin,  4s.  6d.) 
Guild  Principles  in  Peace  and  War,  by  S.  G.  Hobson  (Bell,  2s.  6d.) 

These  books  approach  the  subject  primarily  from  the  poiut 
of  view  of  the  Wage  System 

The  World  of  Labour,  by  G.  D.  H.  Cole  (Bell,  4s.  6d.) 

Self-Government  in  Industry,  by  G.  D.  H.  Cole  (Bell,  4s.  6d.) 

Labour  in  the  Commonwealth,  by  G.  D.  H.  Cole  (Headley,  5s.  6d.) 
The  Meaning  of  National  Guilds,  by  M.  B.  Reckitt  and  C.  E.  Bechhofer 
(Palmer  &  Hayward,  7s.  6d.) 

These  books  approach  the  subject  primarily  from  the  point 
of  view  of  Trade  Unionism 

Authority,  Liberty  and  Function,  by  Ramiro  de  Maeztu  (Allen  &  Unwin, 
4s.  6d.) 

This  book,  which  I  referred  to  in  a  footnote  ( page  310  and 
elsewhere),  is  concerned  with  the  philosophy  underlying  a 
Guild  revival.  It  approaches  the  subject  from  a  medievalist 
standpoint 

The  Restoration  of  the  Guild  System,  by  A.  J.  Penty  (out  of  print) 
Old  Worlds  for  New,  by  A.  J.  Penty  (Allen  &  Unwin,  3s.  6d.) 

Guilds  and  the  Social  Crisis,  by  A.  J.  Penty  (Allen  &  Unwin,  2s.  6d.) 
The  Guild  State,  by  G.  R.  S.  Taylor  (Allen  &  Unwin,  3s.  6d.) 

These  books  approach  the  subject  from  the  point  of  view  of 
mediaeval  economics 


Printed  in  Great  Britain  by 

UNWIN  BROTHERS,  LIMITED,  THE  GRESHAM  PRESS,  WOKING  AND  LONDON 


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